


Rekindling Fire

by Jenna Hilary Sinclair (JennaHilary)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 23:55:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11725224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaHilary/pseuds/Jenna%20Hilary%20Sinclair
Summary: What Happens after the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture





	1. Part One

PART ONE

I leaned over an Ops Center console and scanned the comm traffic for the _Enterprise_ , in orbit over my head. I might be temporarily grounded again, but I was still her captain until Starfleet said I wasn't. The latest entry caught my complete attention. 

_Starfleet Command Stardate 8742.9 to Spock, Commander. Proceed all speed to Vulcan, Shikahr, Vulcan Planetary Council, packet attached, diplomatic service detached from active duty. Immediate implementation. Duration open._

My indrawn breath hissed through my clenched teeth. I knew what this meant. Just as during the week since V'ger had been destroyed I'd been cooperating with Starfleet's PR department to calm a shaken population, so too now was Spock being sent on a similar foray to Vulcan. The Federation was always very sensitive about what the Vulcans thought.

Vulcan. Where the acolytes of Gol still meditated in the desert for arcane purposes I couldn't understand, would never understand. Had Spock really turned his back on the allure of the Kolinahr, probably the only task he had ever set himself that he had not achieved? On Vulcan Sarek and Amanda would reasonably expect Spock to spend time with them, and they would undoubtedly make the case that Spock should stay on his home planet. The Vulcan Science Academy had already announced a special research project to determine what had happened when Will Decker and Ilia had somehow merged with a living machine and. . .disappeared. Where had they gone? Spock would be fascinated with the possibilities, I was sure.

I stepped away from the data display and straightened. I had spoken more truly than Bones had realized when I'd told him on the ship that I needed the being who had once been my best friend, the friend who had left me. Three hard years had convinced me of that. 

And, God help me, I loved Spock. I'd known I loved him those last days of the mission, but back then I had thought it was an unusually intense, platonic love. It seemed to me that our moments in sickbay just days before had finally fulfilled a circuit that had been sparking between us for years as it attempted completion -- but that connection had been foiled by our separation. Then, when our hands joined. . . . Losing myself in his eyes just confirmed what my heart had already told me: I loved him the way that Lori had wanted me to love her. 

I had to talk to him. I knew nothing of the way he felt for me except for that extraordinary, timeless communion we'd shared, and then the ease with which we had interacted in the scant hours before Nogura had commanded me off the ship. If Spock was ordered away to Vulcan, we had to find some truths between us before he left. 

A window provided a view of a little park nestled among the cluster of buildings that was Starfleet Command. Early autumn had colored the leaves of most of the trees, but I ignored the scene. As I reached for my communicator, it beeped before I touched it.

"Kirk here."

"Spock here, Admiral. There is some information I must convey to you, sir."

"You've been ordered to Vulcan. I know." 

A hesitation. "There is. . .more. Time is short. My shuttle leaves in less than an hour. Is there a place where we can talk?" 

The controlled chaos of the Ops Center surrounded me: my domain and where Nogura wanted me to stay. We would see who won that struggle. There was a briefing room down two floors where I'd held many a conference, where Harry Morrow and I regularly disagreed about fundamental policy, but I rebelled at talking to Spock in such sterile surroundings. 

"My apartment. We can talk there. In fifteen minutes?" 

"I will obtain the coordinates and beam down at that time," he said. "Spock out." 

I closed the grid thoughtfully. Of course Spock didn't know where I lived. He'd shared no part of my life during the years on Earth. He'd never, to my knowledge, even met Lori. He hadn't attended her funeral three days before.

I'd just let myself in and was opening the curtains that had been blocking the sunlit view of the bay when I heard sounds of materialization. I turned around only to realize that he was out in the hallway, not in the middle of my living room. That was so like the Spock I remembered. An instant later the doorbell chimed. 

I crossed the room to open the door and there he was. 

I stood and regarded him in silence. Spock still looked like hell: gaunt to the point of emaciation. The one-piece gray uniform that hugged every awkward, bony protrusion of knee and hip and elbow made him appear even thinner. His skin was scoured by the Vulcan suns and yet he was paler than he'd ever been on the _Enterprise_ , so that his hair and eyebrows, that I knew were deep brown with hints of auburn in the sunlight, seemed black, severe, and uncompromising. 

But still _Spock._ How had I ever been so witless as to let him leave?

He spoke just as I was about to. "Admiral. If you have the time to give me, I. . .I have something to say to you."

He was feeling uncertain. Not me. I knew exactly what I wanted. Him, completely. "Let's not talk in the hall, Commander. Come in."

This time I didn't have to order him to sit, he went straight to the plush mauve couch that my wife had picked out and sat down on the very edge of the cushion. I followed him and sat on the white chair facing him: comfortable, but directly opposed to the way I was feeling. I clasped my hands between my knees, searching for a way to talk about what we'd never admitted to each other before. But he spoke first. 

"You are aware of the orders I have received?" he asked abruptly.

"To go explain things to the Vulcan council. Yes."

"Simply put but basically correct. I do not know how long such a posting will last, which is one reason why I believed it imperative to make contact with you before I left. I have. . .a request."

"What is it?"

He swallowed. He'd always had emotions, and sometimes he betrayed them with such physical signs. I had always noticed things about him when we served together: his bobbing Adam's apple and the set of his shoulders and the way he walked. I'd always known when he was pleased or in pain or distracted. 

"I request to be assigned to the _Enterprise_ under your command as soon as my duties on Vulcan are complete or when the ship leaves drydock again, whichever comes first. I am willing to serve in any capacity, although science officer seems a logical position."

"Because you don't want to stay in what's essentially a diplomatic position?"

"I would not disagree with that statement," he said stiltedly; I could see he was weighing each word. He seemed unwilling to say any more than what was essential.

"Well." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I can push your posting through channels, of course, only I'm not sure I would be joining you. I might not be regaining command."

His gaze riveted on me. "Surely Admiral Nogura would not deny you the _Enterprise_. Public opinion -- "

" -- doesn't mean a damn to him. He wants to keep me in Operations. He might manage to do it, too."

That seemed to stun him. "I see," he said slowly.

A surge of nostalgia washed over me when he steepled his fingers before him in thought. So many times I had seen him in just such a pose, sometimes during perilous danger as he struggled to fulfill one of my commands, sometimes over a chess board, sometimes when Bones was teasing him and he was trying to appear nonchalant. 

"In that case," he said with purpose, "I will amend my request. I wish to be posted wherever you are serving."

That was the answer to the question I had not asked. What propelled him back to the ship? I did. 

"Spock. . . ." The truth was there, and so I said it. "I want to serve with you, too. But. . .why do you want to stay with me?"

"It is because of V'ger," he said, and his voice suddenly went very deep and harsh, the way he had sounded when he had first rejoined us. "And Lieutenant Ilia."

He stopped as if there were nothing more to say, as if it were obvious what he meant. "I don't understand," I said.

He stood up and walked over to my picture window with his hands tightly folded behind his back. I stood, too, but I didn't follow him. He had sought space for whatever he was about to say, and so I let him have it.

"When I came back to the _Enterprise_ , I encountered Commander Decker and Lieutenant Ilia. I immediately perceived the connection between them." His tone turned bitter. "Their mutual attraction was obvious even to me, a person who despised my own emotions so much that I attempted to kill that part of myself."

"But you didn't do that." 

He still addressed the yellow afternoon light fading over San Francisco. "When I joined the _Enterprise_ , if I could have found a way to do so, over and above the control imposed by my days at Gol, I would have. I learned again a lesson you had already taught me: emotions can burn. They scald."

He had to be talking about seeing me on the bridge for the first time. So cold he had seemed, so remote. Not hot but cold. I remembered my own pain.

"I observed Decker and Ilia's connection, but I dismissed it as being of no consequence to me personally, nor to the mission. I was in error.

"When I left the ship in my ill-considered attempt to gain closer knowledge of V'ger, an exchange of sorts occurred. For the brief time during which I was engaged in the meld, I experienced not only V'ger, but Ilia as well."

"I know, I remember your debriefing report. Because she had already been absorbed?" 

"Perhaps because she was the most recent addition to its consciousness or because it believed it could communicate best through the filtering thoughts of another humanoid. The pertinent element is that I perceived Ilia's love for Decker through her own mind. Directly."

Slowly he turned to look at me. "This emotion I could not ignore, nor could I consider it of little consequence. It was all-important to her."

I remembered the final scene of Decker's life, the scouring light and the battering noise, the gathering energy. What had happened to him had been terrifying to witness, but the ravening fire had also been fascinating; I had not been able to take my eyes from the process of immolation and merging until Spock had pulled me away from it. 

"And Will felt the same way," I said. "He loved her so much that he chose joining with Ilia and V'ger over life. He made the ultimate sacrifice for the Federation, and I'm going to make sure he'll be honored for that for generations, but I do think it was love that really drove him."

"It is a powerful force, this love."

"Yes," I said simply. Then, softly, "Why are we talking about love, Commander?"

Abruptly he erased the distance between us. I might have been afraid of his sudden intensity and movement, but I have never truly been afraid of him.

"Jim." His hand closed around my bare forearm, just above the wrist, and brought it up between our bodies. A complex mix of feelings swept through me, making my heart pound and testing my ability to not touch him back as I looked down at the contact of his hot fingers on me. 

"I _recognized_ what I perceived in Ilia." His earnest words brought my head up with a snap. His eyes blazed with sincerity. "A helpless longing, a yearning for connection. A need for the other who completed her that had been denied for so long. I recognized it because I had experienced it myself while at Gol. I had thought such feelings were a natural result of my struggle to cast off my emotions, that I felt empty temporarily only until the logic of pure thought could fill me again with the attainment of Kolinahr. But I was wrong. It was my need for you, never excised. You. I realized this even as I awakened in sickbay." 

"You reached for me." 

"And you reached back, as you always have. I made a mistake going to Gol, Jim. The pain inside me, it was caused because I had denied you your rightful place in my thoughts, my memories, and my future. You. I missed you, my companion. Nothing I could do at Gol could ever fill or replace the space that you and I had created together during our years of service on the ship. There is more to me now than there was before I met you, and to deny that part of myself is unproductive and self-deceiving. 

"And that," he released my wrist and took a step back away from me, "is why I ask that I be permitted to serve with you wherever you are posted in Starfleet. It is logical for us to continue our friendship, an association that has been of benefit to us both." 

For a moment I hovered between hearing what I had thought he was going to say -- _it is logical for us to be lovers_ \-- and what he had actually said. It was a shock, like being punched in the face.

"Logical?" I managed to get out. 

"Inasmuch as it is possible to apply logical thinking to this situation, yes."

"As in continuing our friendship."

He was very steadfast and nodded quickly. "That is my desire, yes."

His desire. I remembered how Spock had so seldom been able to say "I want." He still couldn't. Or maybe he didn't even know what he was really wanting. . . .

"So you think that we can serve together, maybe go back to being the command team that we were, go off on another mission and do what we did before."

"I have just told you. Our friendship is important to me."

"It's not going to work, Spock." 

I still could read him, because I saw a flash of concern cross his features, almost panic. "Jim -- "

"That might be enough for you, but it's not enough for me."

His mouth opened to speak but I forestalled him. "No, don't say anything. You've had your chance to talk, now it's my turn." I stalked across the room, not so much to think -- because I knew exactly what I wanted to say -- but to gather energy. I turned around and hurled my words at him like an accusation. 

"I don't need to be friends with you. I've got plenty of friends in 'fleet command. I'm still friends with Bones. I've got friends all over the goddamned Federation. I didn't spend the last three years wishing you'd come back so we could start playing our chess games again!" I surprised myself with my vehemence; that last part came out in a shout. 

But I didn't stop myself or attempt to calm myself down. This was how I felt, and if Spock of Vulcan couldn't take me, human emotional reactions and all, then I needed to find out right then. I advanced a few steps closer to him and jabbed a finger in the air. "And that's not what you need, either. You're backtracking. Damn friendship. Friends don't hold hands the way we did, and friends don't hear each other's thoughts across hundreds of light years. You forget, Spock, you heard me; it's in your report and I read it."

"I -- " 

But I interrupted him again with a swipe of my hand. "Friends don't say 'Pull strings so that I can serve with you.' Do you know what that sounds like? It's ridiculous. Friends don't feel that way about each other. We have another term for that in Standard, one you seem to be afraid of using unless it's referring to somebody else. You're afraid to take what you've said to its logical conclusion. You claim to recognize what you found in Ilia, what she shared with Decker and what I feel for you. It's -- "

"Love."

He said it quietly, one small whisper in my whirlwind of accelerating passion, but it silenced me. I stood there and stared at him, at my friend who was so pale and worn and who I needed so much.

"I harbor great emotion towards you, Jim. Put in human terms, I love you. You force me to say it." 

"Force you?"

"I am not as naïve as you suppose me. I am well aware of the nature of my feeling for you. It is the kind of feeling that any normal Vulcan would hide if they could, for it is an obsession, an onslaught." He turned his back on me. "I had hoped to be spared telling you." His voice dripped acid. "But you have always forced me into corners."

I advanced behind him and talked to the back of his head, though I wanted to touch him. "Why? You're saying what I want to hear."

"You were not listening. I am not a normal Vulcan."

"It doesn't matter that you're half-human, you proved that at your pon -- "

He whirled around and grabbed my shoulders in a grip so tight his fingers hurt my bones. "You do not understand, and that is unlike you. Listen to me. Nine days ago, I was almost Kolinahru."

I broke his hold on me and insisted, "It doesn't matter."

All the intensity fled from his body, like water running down a drain. "It does," he said flatly. "It means that I cannot love you in an acceptable fashion."

Abruptly he stalked back to the couch, there to sit as precisely as if he were still in full control instead of radiating emotion. By the way he held his head and how his hands tensely cradled his knees, I knew better. After a moment I followed and sat next to him. I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. 

"We seem to be talking at cross purposes. I've been practically screaming at you. What a way to make a declaration. You say you love me but you can't love me. There's a disconnect here that we've got to fix. I promise not to. . ." I hovered on the verge of saying I wouldn't force him into any more corners, but I knew myself too well. Instead I said, ". . .I promise to listen to everything you have to say. Tell me. Make me understand. And then we'll figure out a way to fix things."

For the space of several human heartbeats he was quiet, but eventually he spoke.

"It is not that I do not harbor strong emotion for you, Jim," he started. "I know it is what humans would call the sort of love that leads to intimate interaction. I do not understand why I did not recognize it before I left for Gol, but I put no name to the instability I experienced at the end of the five year mission. I was intent on other things, I believe, but if I had stopped to pay attention to my. . .my feelings, instead of pursuing an unlikely ideal, if I had not left," his head came up and he stared at the landscape picture of the Earth's Moon that I had hung on the wall, "the odds are high that today we would be a bonded pair. Through three years of discipline and the rites of Gol, still your thoughts called to me. Do you know how unusual that is?" 

He looked at me. His face was rigid in its enforced calm, but his eyes were ravaged by unhappiness. I hated to see him like that.

Without thinking I placed my hand over one of his that cupped his knee. His skin was so harsh and dry. "We're unique. We were meant to be together."

He moved under my touch but not to pull away, more a way to maximize our contact. "And when you say that, you mean the complete range of intimate association, including the sharing of bodies in a sexual manner."

I blinked. "Yes, of course I mean that. I want to make love to you, Spock. When I say I feel love for you, that comes with it." 

"And under better circumstances than these I would interact that way with you. In the Vulcan manner with the body and with the mind." 

Was that longing I heard? I thought so. 

"But I cannot. Because I came so close to being Kolinahru."

"But you seem to be expressing yourself so much more than you were when you first rejoined the ship, I thought that -- "

"Do you truly understand," he interrupted me and returned to a contemplation of where our hands were touching, "what the attainment of Kolinahr means?" 

"The complete suppression of emotion," I answered slowly. "Which I thought you had abandoned."

"To achieve supreme logical thought, the prospective Kolinahru works to divorce the body from the mind. Emotions are primarily the products of biological urges; if the essence of one's existence is separate from the physical, then the temptation to regress into emotional behavior is far less. Jim, so short a time ago, I was but one step away from the achievement I strove for three years to attain. I was almost there."

"You're. . .divorced from your body?"

He nodded. "I will no longer experience the pon farr cycle. I will no longer experience sexual desire." He drew in a steady breath that I imagined being ragged. "If I had but known how the days would turn. . . . Desire is not something I can share with you."

Slowly I pulled my hand away from over his. It was all clear to me now. "That's why you didn't want to use the word 'love.' Why you insisted on calling it friendship."

"And yet I was not strong enough to simply stay away from you. I am sorry, Jim. My need to be with you is great, and I could not overcome it. If I could give physical intimacy to you, please know that I would."

I sat next to him, the being I loved, and I thought furiously. "But once you left Gol you were able to express emotion again, even though you'd been suppressing it, overcoming it all through your time there. At least, once you came back from V'ger you did. Why can't you reconnect with your body now?"

"It is not so simple. There are certain pathways that have been blocked, connections shattered. It is one of the very last attainments of the initiate, one of the most difficult to achieve. That is why I was able to stand before T'Sai and seek the Kolinahru status. I was ready."

I didn't want to accept it. I wouldn't accept it. "That makes no sense," I accused. "Like you said, you shouldn't have been able to hear my thoughts over the light years, either. But you did. If you violated what was expected of a Kolinahru then, why shouldn't -- "

"Jim," he interrupted me, but not in the old way we'd had of finishing each other's thoughts. "I know my own body." 

His words held the utter finality of conviction. How often had I relied upon my science officer for evaluation of unfamiliar phenomena and based my own decisions on his advice?

"And now you're here with your feet in two different worlds," I said bitterly, and then I had to stand and walk away from him. I turned and regarded him with clenched fists, feeling hollowed out, as if what I was inside had been abruptly vaporized. "You're really a hybrid now. Your heart and your mind in this world, but your body's in some crazy place where only thought matters, where love and feeling and arousal don't exist." 

He looked down to the floor. "I knew you would feel this way. You are a very sensual man, Jim. The years we have spent apart have not changed that memory I have of you. I did not wish to offer you my love if I could not do so in the manner you could accept."

Once again, Spock the self-effacing, the self-deprecating. "And what about what you can accept?" I could see him reach for some semblance of calm and resolution. He didn't succeed, because I could hear his misery. 

"I have no choice. I am as I am, the product of decisions I have made and actions I have taken. I cannot go back." 

"You're prepared to live a sexless life? Without passion, without. . ." I groped for the right term, ". . .connection?"

He rose and came over to me. "I would still be your friend, Jim, if you will have me. Even though I would be one of many." 

I squeezed my eyes shut against the sight of him. The past three years had been like a disorienting dream that I'd kept hoping I'd awaken from: everything off-kilter, no one reacting the way they should, and my own sense of self challenged as I tried to find a way to function in the political environment of headquarters and yet maintain my self-respect. Now, to be inflicted with this impossibility so soon after Lori's death, after Decker's wrenching sacrifice, as I had to ignore my pathetic performance on the bridge before Spock had arrived and tell myself I truly was fit for permanent command of my ship. . . . Spock's rejection settled into my chest where all the other pains throbbed. 

I opened my eyes to see him standing so very near, looking at me with worry and with his slim, gray-uniform-clad body close enough to. . . . Suddenly his proximity struck me like an aphrodisiac poured boiling directly into my veins. The hair on the back of my neck rose. My cock tingled and my fingers flexed with craving. I wanted to shove him against the wall and slam our bodies together. I wanted to tangle my fingers in his hair, ravage his mouth, throw him down on Lori's couch and spend my lust and my anger and all my sweet affection in his wiry body as I roared my need of him.

And after, I wanted to learn to live with him as we pursued our far-flung adventures with our white mistress and be with him every day, to have access to his steady support and his fascinating insights and to how he had always allowed me knowledge of his unique, unwavering self. . . .

I took a few moments to grope for control and try to suppress those bitter-sweet imaginings. "Do you really think we can. . .do this? They say old lovers can't be friends."

"But we were never -- "

I think it was my look that stopped him. "We were," I said intensely. "We were, and don't you deny it. In everything but the physical."

He had the grace to avert his gaze. He knew it was true. We both remembered how it had been between us. If only. . . .if only on the day we'd said good-bye in the transporter room when he'd left for Vulcan, I'd had the wits to recognize my own feelings for what they were. How could I blame him for not being emotionally perceptive when I had been just as blind? 

"Let us be friends." He was distressed. "Since we cannot -- "

"Are you absolutely sure? Suppose we try and -- "

"You would suggest I go to your bed and offer you. . .what? A body that cannot be roused, a mate who can never respond?"

The vision flared like fire in my imagination, Spock naked and me over him, our bodies skin to skin, me taking. . . . _Yes!_

Spock as calm as he ever was, offering himself on a perverse altar of my desire. _No._ The sacrificial flames flickered and died. _He doesn't want me. Can't want me._ It would be obscene to pursue this. 

And yet still I said, desperately, "It's going to be torture to retreat from this and still be together in other ways. Not just for me, for you, too. This emotion that's between us. . ." My hands moving through the unresisting air tried to encompass love and lust and wanting and bare need and fondness and ease of conversation and that striking affinity that had always marked how one human captain and his half-Vulcan first officer interacted, ". . .it's not something that's easily controlled or easily ignored. Love, this kind of love, moves towards fulfillment. It's why you couldn't stay away today. Don't you see?"

"You would have me come to you without the physical desire that is the hallmark of such a relationship for humans? You deserve so much better than that in your choice of intimate partner, Jim. I would not impose myself on you in such a way. You have known what it is to have a true spouse. I urge you to seek another." 

"And just give us up. Just forget everything we might have been to one another. Is that what you want?"

"No," Spock breathed, visibly affected at the image I painted. "Not forget. I could not forget you, any part of you, ever, in any context. But. . . ."

"But what?"

Spock straightened. "It would be most difficult for me to go to you and offer you so little when I wish for so much more to be between us. The pain of being your friend. . .I require that. The pain of being closer without being able to give you everything, that I could not endure. Do not ask it of me."

I wouldn't. I couldn't do that to him. And what he asked for, the simple, uncomplicated gift of friendship, what we had shared before, wasn't that something I could do? Endure at least that pain in exchange for his nearness? 

That the love we had between us should be reduced to mirrored, aching tenderness. . . .

"I want you," I said roughly. "Any way I can get you. But. . .not sexually if you can't. . .if you really can't." 

I saw his relief, and I realized that he really had been concerned that I would reject him completely.

"I thank you," he said softly. "I will exert effort not to disappoint you as your friend."

"See that you do, First Officer."

"Then you will arrange for us to be posted to positions where we have access to one another?"

What a curious way of putting it. Even through my distress I had to smile at how he used a term that anyone else would interpret as having a sexual meaning. And yet, he spoke the truth. It seemed we did want access to one another. 

"I'll do my best." 

"Then I know you will accomplish it," he said, and he stepped away from me. "It is eighteen hundred forty-three hours and I must leave for my transport to Vulcan. I hope to resume our. . .relationship in a short time, but I cannot predict how long this posting will keep me from Earth. Therefore, please know that I am sure you should return to the _Enterprise_ as her captain." 

I rubbed my hand across my jaw, felt the faint stubble that impeded my own touch, and was only a little amazed that he had sensed the misgivings I had shared with no one. "I'm glad one of us is sure. Nogura might block me." 

"That would be misguided." 

"If you say so."

His comm beeped and informed him that he had ten minutes to board the ship that would take him away again. He told them to lock in his coordinates, but before he could give the command I stopped him. 

"Spock."

"Yes?"

I hated the neediness that made me speak, but I wasn't going to pretend. "Come back to me. Don't let Vulcan take you again."

Then he was right in front of me, moving as he had before, and I was confronted by his energy, his vitality, and a vision of how vigorous a lover he would be. Would have been. 

"I will not commit that error a second time," he said, and his expression was open with intense sincerity. "Do not mistake the nature of my regard for you. It is as I have said. If only I had known. . . ."

"Things would have been different." A bonded pair, he had said. My thoughts swelled in my throat.

"Yes," he managed to choke out. "Jim. . . ."

And then, as if he could not stop himself, two fingers came up and, after a noticeable hesitation, they contacted the side of my face. So warm. . . . I wanted to close my eyes to better experience the slow stroking as more of his heat settled on my skin, but I couldn't. Sadness, even misery poured off him in waves, mixed with immense guilt. It was as if we were sharing thoughts, or at least feelings, but I knew he shouldn't meld for months, the healers had said, until he had recovered from his encounter with the vast entity that had brought us back together. . .but not together enough. 

I leaned into him, and he simply stood there, barely touching me, each of us inhaling shallowly and not wanting our contact to end. I thought of turning my head and kissing those fingers, but I stopped myself. This was so wrong. Everything about it was wrong. 

I watched as the transporter took him. I spent a while after that contemplating the darkness that had fallen over the city and wondering about which was the mistake: bringing our bodies together or keeping them apart? 

 

***** *****

 

Over the next two months I devoted myself to my own hybrid existence, with half my time spent in Operations and half on the road doing what I could to encourage Earth's population back into a sense of security. When Starfleet paraded me as the savior of the planet and the man who had defeated V'ger, I didn't like it but I saw the sense of it. People want to feel that there are solutions to problems and that they are protected from the unknown and the unknowable. 

I did what I could to provide perspective. I changed speeches and appearances and early morning breakfasts and formal dinners into lessons. I talked about the utter courage in what Will Decker did, and I tried to highlight Starfleet's mission to explore and make contact with other civilizations as well as defend against aggression. I pointed out that V'ger had been neutralized -- not defeated at all, but rather deflected -- not by force of arms but through communication, the ultimate communication of one being to another. 

Some people listened and understood, but too many didn't. Those were the ones who just wanted to see a hero, get close to me, and ridiculously ask for my autograph. I've never understood that. What good is my signature to a person who doesn't know me at all? But of course I do understand; it's contacting a part of something bigger than yourself. The problem was I didn't feel very big. Some members of the audience saw only my success, but I felt my own failures too keenly. I'd foolishly married Lori without love or even real commitment and then inevitably been unable to sustain the marriage. I hadn't given Decker enough credit or power when he had known the ship and I hadn't. I'd lost the love of my life because of ignorance of my own heart and bad timing. This was a hero? 

The question of whether I would request consideration as the _Enterprise's_ permanent captain -- or try to ram it down Nogura's throat -- was put on the back burner. Post-mission maintenance had revealed cracks and twisting of both her nacelles, probably caused by proximity to that last cataclysm of V'ger's before it disappeared. Something like that would take four or five months to fix, and while they were at it the techs were modifying the new engines as well. It would be quite a while before my ship took flight again. 

Nobody else was appointed in my stead, and I kept my ear close enough to the unofficial lines of communication to know that nobody else was being contemplated: I was still officially captain of the U.S.S. _Enterprise_ , resplendent in drydock, and I decided to at least temporarily not rock the boat. I imagined that Nogura was expecting me to make a play for her; keeping my silence while balancing my titular captaincy with planet-side duties was likely to make him wonder what I was up to. Good. I would do what I could to keep him wondering and improve my position until he would have no choice but to give her to me permanently. I didn't know in any detail how I would manage that, but I had learned patience in the previous three years.

Besides, Spock wanted to serve with me on our ship. I was going to make sure that happened for him.

Spock wrote to me every two weeks, and I had to smile at his stilted phrasing and his careful choice not to say anything that was in the least interesting about his stay on his home planet. He had said he'd come back, and I trusted that he would, but apparently he didn't want to run the chance of having me doubt him. I wrote back to him each time, and my guess is I seemed just as awkward to him as he seemed to me. The two of us were obviously not cut out to be letter writers. No, we communicated best when we were together. My masculine pride bowed before that undisputed truth: everything was better then.

When V'ger had turned my life upside down, Lori and I had been apart for six months, officially divorced for four. I hadn't slept with anyone in that time, but when my hopes were shattered by Spock, my body roared into life again, as if he'd tantalized me with what I really wanted and now I couldn't shut the mechanism down. I'd like to think I didn't take advantage of my notoriety when I was out doing my duty for Starfleet P.R., but there were so many women with unmistakable invitations in their glances, women who understood it would be for just one night. A few times, the look I gave back to them said yes.

I used them, they used me, and nobody got hurt. After all, I told myself, sex is a part of life. Just not Spock's life.

Men, too. The first time I realized a man in one of my audiences was giving me the eye, a sort of fierce, exultant howl rose up, unbidden, from the center of me. I didn't want to examine too closely what drove me to invite that undeniably masculine person to my bed that night. Yes, I'd always been mainly attracted to women, but I'd done my share of experimenting when in my twenties. Now, at nearly forty, I'd almost forgotten. . . .

I did it twice, with two different men, each of them respected, intelligent individuals, but I didn't give a damn about that. Once I did the taking, then the next encounter I was taken, and by the time the second man walked out my door my howl had been reduced to a whimper. 

I ached. To have that with Spock: the sexual giving and taking that we could have extended into all the other areas of our lives. To not ever have him walk out my door. 

I pulled myself back together and made sure no other man came close to me again. 

A few more encounters and even women's appeal dulled. Hell, I've never pretended to be a saint, but even self-love was more fulfilling than what I'd shared with those strangers. I wanted Spock. 

God, I wanted Spock. 

But I couldn't have him, and that was that. I worked hard to make myself believe it. 

After that I had sex with my right hand when I couldn't deny the need anymore, as any good Starfleet admiral should. What did I fantasize about to bring myself to arousal and completion? Not my best friend, not that moment I'd turned around on the bridge and seen him, and not the way he'd touched me in my apartment with his paired fingers. . . . The symbolism hadn't escaped me. What we might have had. 

I cursed the monks at Gol a lot. Surak came in for his fair share of abuse, too. It didn't change anything. 

Even Rear Admiral James Tiberius Kirk, conqueror of V'ger, cannot hold center stage forever, and as the days grew shorter in the northern hemisphere I pointed out the law of diminishing returns to Starfleet P.R., refused all further publicity engagements, and in the crisp early December air went back to full-time duty in Ops. 

The frontiers were relatively quiet, and I soon realized I could turn that to my advantage. Strategically absenting myself from Ops completely would prove that my assistant was more than capable of filling my shoes permanently. Sworikov would do a better job of handling Morrow and his constant opposition than I ever had, anyway. The admiral, who stood in the chain of command between me and Nogura, had a distinctive style: to butt heads, to question everything, to doubt competence. His ambition was for the CinC's office when Nogura retired; I would be happy to let him have it if I could find my way back to the center seat of my ship. 

I comp-mailed Nogura's office that I was taking a two week leave and before the old man could object had already blacked out my comm to all but Priority One messages, said good-bye to my staff, and signed myself off post. All part of the plan. 

I emerged into the evening darkness feeling free and also at a loss. I considered looking up Bones -- Christmas in Georgia with him and his family both appealed and repelled -- but decided against it. 

I found my way instead to an exclusive resort in the northern Rocky Mountains, an enclave for the rich and famous. Probably my name had something to do with getting me first class accommodations where the beautiful people went to play, but I didn't trade on it deliberately. I just wanted someplace where I wouldn't be fawned over and no one would extend a publicity photo and a pen my way. 

The first day I arrived mid-afternoon, took a short hike around the property that nestled on the side of a mountain, ordered room service for dinner, and slept for a dreamless ten hours. The next day I rented some cross-country skiing equipment and took myself off on a long, lonely trail that spent most of its time above the tree line. There was a magnificent view of the small town below in the valley, with a dot that must have been a fir tree in the center square, festooned with whatever it is they put on Christmas trees. The sounds of a choir of school children singing traditional carols even came to my ears, courtesy of the peculiar acoustic properties of the swelling valleys and mountains.

That night I made my way down to the lodge's gathering room off the lobby, where people were crowded around the open fireplace that was roaring away in the center of the room. The scene seemed like an ad for holiday conviviality, nothing genuine there, but I was bored with my own company. So I joined them in the upholstered circle of benches that surrounded the firepit and quietly listened to their talk with a glass of mulled wine cradled in my hands.

I stared into the fire as a melancholy mood passed over me. I was close enough to the heat to feel it against the soles of my shoes, propped up on the rail that circled the flames. The image of the last fire I'd seen was etched on my retinas: Decker and Ilia facing each other, Decker being burned alive in the force of. . .what? I had to think that part of that conflagration was the fierce attraction between the two of them, finally fulfilled in some way nobody understood. I think I'd seen what Spock had said he'd recognized, the need. There had also been joy in those flames, and I urgently hoped that wherever Decker was now, he was happy. If there was even a trace of the being called Will Decker left. That was one of the big questions, wasn't it? The ones being investigated by the VSA that Spock had carefully not mentioned, that I had feared would attract him more than serving again with me. 

I looked around at the mostly-counterfeit frivolity that surrounded me, the too-loud laughter, and the freely-flowing drinks and drugs. _Ah, Spock, what would you think of this?_ I could just imagine his eyebrow flying and the things we'd say to each other. But he wasn't here, nobody connected to me was, and that was my own damn fault. I knew how to make myself part of this crowd, how to make myself agreeable to both men and women. It was an element of the command persona that I was increasingly certain I needed to exert again, if only to assure myself that I could. 

And so I noticed that the fire was burning fake logs and was ultimately just as inauthentic as the people there, and then I turned to the woman next to me and started a conversation. 

As the night wore on, none of them seemed to care who I was, which was a relief. This resort was so high-end that the patrons probably had their own publicity problems and knew enough not to impose them on others. I vaguely recognized a few faces and earned some laughs when I obviously didn't recognize others. How the hell should I know who the latest singing sensation was? 

"So, Admiral, will you be staying on when the big celebrations start?" one of the well-groomed middle-aged men jovially asked me. He clapped a hand on my knee and the drink he was holding sloshed dangerously close to overflowing.

I shrugged. "Maybe."

"Timberlands has it all covered. Hanukkah last week, the Solstice on the twenty-first, then Christmas -- "

" -- New Year's," put in the woman next to him, whose off-the-shelf perfection made me think she'd had one plastic surgery too many. "That's the best party. I'm Angela, by the way. Angie." 

We shook hands cordially before the man, who told me he was Roger, continued, "They even hold religious services here, any religion you can think of."

I thought of all the different religious beliefs in the Federation and offered them a small, disbelieving smile that they didn't interpret. 

"The Solstice is the best of the religious ceremonies," Angie was saying. "I was here last year for that. They start a big bonfire outside and have a lot of the trappings you'd normally associate with Christmas but really are a lot older. You should try to stay for it if you can. And then the Christmas service is impressive as well, and the music's sublime, as good as a church choir."

"I'm. . .not sure I'm a believer," I said diplomatically. It had been quite a while since I had attended any kind of religious service or believed that I should. I remembered Apollo and Sargon and the obelisk on Miramanne's planet, and though I knew that belief in a Supreme Being seemed to be an instinct of sentient life forms -- Kuppenheimer's famous "instinct towards God" -- still I had to ask myself who or what was guiding the countless billions in our universe. I already knew for a fact that the search for omnipotence had taken humans and our sentient cousins down some strangely mistaken paths. V'ger with all its vast knowledge probably came closer to the old-fashioned definitions of God than anything else I knew of, but there was no divinity in it. 

"Oh, you don't have to be a believer to attend and enjoy any of these ceremonies."

I looked at Angie askance, at her obvious sincerity. "Religion as spectacle? As entertainment?" That abruptly offended me, and she was able to tell. 

"Oh, no," she said, flustered. "I didn't mean -- " But then someone started playing a guitar close to us, and any more conversation on the subject was diverted. 

It didn't matter, as I would be gone before the time for any kind of worship at the Timberlands. Though I had two weeks, my enthusiasm for cross-country skiing and my tolerance for this sort of company wouldn't last long.

By the time the clock struck midnight, a different woman with whom I'd been having a half-hearted conversation made it obvious she wouldn't mind it if I joined her in her bed. Anna-Marie was pretty and young and vacuous, somebody-important's daughter. She went with me out to the wide porch that spanned the resort's main building. A front was coming in and clouds were sweeping in from the west; we'd have snow in an hour or two, I told her. She hung onto my elbow and pushed herself up close. It was the perfect opportunity for a kiss or to press against her breasts, but though I felt the familiar urge, I didn't. 

I skied across a scattering of fresh powder the next day and pushed myself hard, from first light to when it began to fade around sixteen-hundred hours. It wasn't a good idea to be out in the twilight and descending cold, but I'd gone further than I'd realized that day. I stopped to catch my breath when I was still a good two hundred meters above the lodge and twenty minutes away by the twisted trail. I leaned on my ski poles and watched the sun touch a ridge of the western mountain, and then I settled my skis more firmly in the snow, determined to watch the sun completely set.

The star under which I'd been born, the planet where I'd been raised, these mountains, this valley, this instant in time: beauty. I inhaled all of it deeply and tasted the fresh-scented air that filled my lungs, and then the wind whispering through the pines captured my attention. It was a different sound than played through lowland trees, such as the cottonwoods under which I'd grown up, with their heavy rustling and the crackling as you walked on their leaves when they'd fallen. Pine needles produced a shushing sigh as they bent before the breeze, a secret sound that hinted at profound mysteries just past a human's ability to perceive them. The trees around me were speaking, like the mountain range that dared me to see over it, the valley's rushing stream that called to me to follow its path, or the inexplicable dots of light that illuminated my journeys through the nighttime sky. 

As primitive humans on Earth struggled to understand our place in the universe, thousands of years before, these had been the natural wonders that had, perhaps, called them to imagine the gods. Questions like a growing blade of grass had no answer for those people, and the rush of darkness across the face of the mountains on the longest night of the year must have seemed like doom narrowly averted. Would the sun rise again the next morning? 

In just the few minutes since I'd stopped, I could feel the cooler temperature already against my face, and the valley below me was covered in deepening shadow. I watched as the lights of the town attempted to gain ascendancy over the dark.

Movement down the slope and much closer to the lodge caught my attention, and I twisted to peer into a substantial clearing that made a natural amphitheater. Some workers were adding wood to a stack that already was tall as a man. That had to be the bonfire Angie had mentioned for the Solstice. It would make an impressive display when kindled. Did the resort, I cynically wondered, hire some local people to dance around it in mimicry of primitive ceremony, in false worship? Or did alcohol take care of the dancing? I could imagine the heat the wood -- real this time -- would generate. Not as much as V'ger had. 

I'd had a flame inside me all during the _Enterprise's_ five year mission, and I'd thought it was still there when I'd taken over command from Will. Maybe. Maybe not. What did Nogura, the shrewd judge of men, think? He wanted me in Operations. Spock, who used to know me better than any person in the universe, he thought it was still there. All those five years, Spock and I had danced around our inner fires, spiraling closer and closer to each other until it had seemed our flames had almost merged. Now, he was cold. I could never warm him again. 

I zipped up my jacket against a rising wind. More snow was on the way, and I was not going to allow myself to become buried in melancholy thoughts. 

As I found my way past nine o'clock that evening to the convivial group clustered around the fire, I was already bored and wondering if I really wanted one more day of skiing. I was out of my element.

Angie and Roger greeted me like I was an old friend, and Anna-Marie sent me a dazzling smile from across the room, promising what I didn't want. I put my feet up again to settle down for the evening, had two generously spiked eggnogs and was carelessly contemplating a third when something -- perhaps a stray whiff of frigid air coming in from outside -- lifted my gaze from the toes of my shoes. Standing by the front door, near the deserted reception desk, was Spock. Even with his slender silhouette obscured by heavy-duty outerwear, I recognized him. 

For those first few seconds before he saw me, I felt as if I had stepped into a turbolift on the topmost floor of Starfleet headquarters and that it had plummeted straight down to the ground. Free-fall: my stomach, my head, my wildly pulsing emotions. I swallowed heavily. _As much as I want to see you, I'm not prepared to see you, not and live up to my foolish, impossible promises._ All the yearning I had thought I had successfully overcome instead overwhelmed me. 

Could old lovers be good friends? Not a chance. 

Damn. Damn it. 

Damn, it was wonderful to see him. My hands around my empty glass clenched and then unclenched, and I began to smile.

Then he turned and surveyed the crowded room. Over his shoulder and through the double-glazed windows, I could see snowflakes swirling. As he efficiently pushed back the hood of his jacket, a few of the flakes were melting on his bangs. The tip of his nose was a deep olive, and his cheeks were raw-looking from trudging through the cold. My friend, newly arrived from Vulcan, had come to find me in the middle of a snowstorm and must have hiked up the mountain from the village in weather even I would have preferred to avoid. 

In the next moment our gazes linked, and I saw his reaction to the welcome I couldn't help but give him. That ghost of a smile, that in the lonely times with Lori I had sometimes thought I had only imagined in memory, showed in his eyes and in the relaxed set of his mouth. 

_Ah, Spock. It is good to see you_ I conveyed to him in that way of communicating without words that we’d used all through our mission together.

A questioning eyebrow rose. _Am I welcome to join you?_

Anna-Marie had abandoned me for more receptive, younger prey five minutes before, and so the seat next to me was vacant. I plunked my feet back down on the floor, ruthlessly swept the afghan she'd curled up in to the side, and emphatically thumped the cushion. _Come on over here._

Spock detoured to one of the communal racks, reluctantly stripping off his gloves and unbuttoning his jacket. I was glad that I was settled near to the fire, for he was unmistakably cold. He picked his way between laughing noisy people, over sprawled-out legs, and finally sat down next to me, forced by the crowd to be close enough for me to put my arm around him. I didn't, wisely deciding not even to rest my arm along the back of the seat and thus test the boundaries of my control. But I might have. I could have trailed the tips of my fingers along his shoulder, if I'd wanted to. 

My decision didn't seem to matter too much. My body, that had been lazy and even a little drowsy just two minutes before, was now energized and wide awake. 

"I see that your computer skills haven't diminished," I observed by way of greeting.

He didn't misunderstand. "You did not leave word of where you were staying," he said severely. "I had no other choice but to locate you by other means." 

"Just got back?"

"This afternoon."

"You work fast."

"I am on leave. I wanted to see you," he said simply. 

"Good. It's good to see you, too. I presume you didn't manage to get a room here?"

"You are correct. I am lodged in the town in a less ostentatious hostelry."

I snorted. There was nothing like Spock's plain-speaking. 

"I don't think you got those clothes on Vulcan."

He surveyed the cream colored Aran-patterned sweater he was wearing over corduroy navy pants. He'd always had trouble with sleeves that weren't long enough for his long arms, and his bony wrists were exposed now. 

"That is correct. However, I had thought these garments would be warm enough for the environment." He sounded faintly accusatory, as if the clothes had let him down. 

"Got your silk undies on?" I teased. He had often worn specially insulated underwear when we visited planets with less than ideal climates for a desert-bred Vulcan.

"Of course."

"Tell me how your trip went. How are your parents?"

"We had a gratifying visit, I am pleased to report, and I even stayed in the clan house with them for several days. My parents concurred with my decision to leave Gol, and. . . ."

As he talked about Sarek and Amanda, I twisted a little to face him better, filling myself up with the sight of him as he spoke. I remembered how fundamentally satisfying our days together on the ship had been, especially those last two years when we had seemed to settle into each other. I wanted to at least have that again, and I would try my damndest to rekindle that part of our relationship during the time we might be able to share.

He'd come to me. That had to count for something. I warmed at the knowledge. 

"And you? I would have thought to find you with your relatives or friends from San Francisco during this holiday season." 

I shrugged easily. "I wanted to get away from it all." 

He looked around at the hubbub that surrounded us. "Away from it all," he repeated skeptically.

I laughed out loud and knew a few heads turned our way. "In a manner of speaking. There's good cross-country skiing in the meadows over the mountain. Maybe we could try it together tomorrow. Or. . .am I assuming here?"

"You are not," he quickly reassured. "I am busy only with those engagements I can share with you. I would be pleased to join you. However, at the moment. . . ." He caught the attention of a server and nodded the youngster towards us. 

"Jim, would you like to have a drink? Another drink?" That part hadn't changed; Spock was as considerate as he'd always been, as considerate as a lover, as I wanted to be with him. 

"Cognac, thanks."

"We've got a six year Hennessey," the waiter explained, "or if you want something older, there's a twenty year Rémy Martin."

I smiled at my companion. "It's a special occasion. I'll have the Martin." 

"I would prefer something warm for myself," Spock said.

The waiter took a good look at the pointed ears and I saw him realize for the first time Spock wasn't human. I didn't think very many off-worlders found their way to Timberlands. 

"Uh, mulled wine?"

"I would prefer hot chocolate." 

"Okay, one cognac and one hot chocolate, coming up."

While we waited to be served, I told him about the ski trails around the area, where I'd been already and where I hoped the two of us could set out the next day. Half an hour before, I had desultorily considered abandoning my plans altogether, but with Spock as a companion, I found I was interested again. There wasn't much in the way of outdoor activities that he hadn't mastered from his many years of planetfalls, and he shared my enthusiasm for physical pursuits in all different kinds of environments. As long as he had the right clothing and equipment, Spock could traverse snowy terrain as well as I could.

When the drinks appeared on the server's tray in front of us, Spock took both of them in hand. He ceremoniously handed me the wide-bowled crystal.

"A toast. To our friendship." 

I kissed our glasses together and steadily echoed, "To our friendship." 

I meant exactly what I said and no more -- a declaration of intent -- but helplessly I watched him drink and how he licked off the whipped cream that settled on his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. 

"Jim," he said without reproach when he, of course, noticed how intensely I was staring at him. 

I looked away and leaned my elbows heavily on my thighs, with the untasted brandy glass dangling between my fingers. "Sorry," I said, but I wasn't. "This is going to take some getting used to."

"Did I make a mistake coming here?" His voice was so low that he could have been asking himself the question.

I didn't answer him right away, but when had I ever turned away from a challenge or from Spock? "No," I said after a few beats of my heart. "If we're going to make this work, we've got to start somewhere. I was getting lonely. You've come at a good time." 

"I will endeavor to make sure you are never lonely."

"Spock. . . ." I protested, still not looking at him. "Don't. Friends in human society can't make those kinds of pledges to each other. You know that." 

"A deficiency," he declared with intensity. "I would change that." 

I gave a sad half-laugh and leaned against the backrest, then put up one foot on the rail around the fire, and then crossed the other one over it. There, that would give me distance and safety. 

"You are a trial, Commander Spock," I tried to say lightly, and finally allowed myself to glance towards his still form. The look he was aiming at me. . .the only word to describe it was "hungry." No space near him was safe, and there was no distance far enough from him that would erase my attraction to him. 

This was an impossible situation. . .that we had to make possible. "And you are tempting beyond belief," I continued. "Didn't we set some limits? Am I the only one who is going to abide by them?"

He was silent for long enough that I knew he was really contemplating my gentle accusation. "You are correct. I. . .this is a challenging task we have set ourselves. I have been behaving in an inconsistent fashion."

"Not really. We've been behaving. . .how we always have before."

"I ask forgiveness."

"Me, too," I said roughly. "Let's talk about something else. Of cabbages and kings."

He instantly pursued the reference to Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking Glass._ "I do not consume living invertebrates such as oysters." 

"Not a practice I would expect you to approve," I agreed. "My fondness for the energizing properties of oysters notwithstanding, I haven't had one in months." 

As the next unexpected, wonderful hours passed, as the wind gathered velocity so that we could hear it whipping through the high branches of the trees outside, we talked about all sorts of things: the algorithms that might someday be able to accurately predict cold fronts, and the differences between high-country Earth tundra and the mountainous terrain on Vulcan, and how Spock should be updated in new systems and controls before he was assigned to any starship, and the book that I had picked up to read in the communal hot tub earlier that evening, a best seller that he had finished on his most recent trip from Vulcan. It was the kind of far-ranging conversation that we both enjoyed immensely but had seldom been able to indulge in during our active service together.

At one point Spock picked up the afghan that Anna-Marie had coyly snuggled into and unself-consciously wrapped it around himself. I laughed at him again, maybe a little raggedly, but I hoped he didn't notice. I was determined to live up to my side of the strange bargain we had made, that enticed us and distanced us at the same time.

Sometimes he held his hands to the fire for warmth; I turned away from the light that caressed his long fingers. 

If we hadn't had that shattering conversation in my apartment, when we'd denied ourselves the expression of how we really felt about each other, I would have said nothing had changed. We really had slipped back into the way we had treated each other before. Oh, maybe he was a little different. Quieter, without the raw edge of neediness that had especially characterized our last months on the ship that had sent him back to Vulcan. I spent a little while puzzling over how he could have gone through the Kolinahru training, have come so close to excising all feelings, and yet still be the man I could respond to like this. Could want. I couldn't detect anything different about him that would indicate that he was unable to experience physical desire. Shouldn't I? Or was I fooling myself? Or had I fooled myself before? 

Inevitably, I had to introduce him to a few of those around us, and I shared him for almost an hour with Angie and Roger. Angie talked again about how much she enjoyed the resort during the holiday season and her plans to attend every one of the ceremonies or parties that would be hosted at Timberlands, and though Spock listened to her with his usual grave courtesy, I could see some other reaction in his eyes. Skepticism or amusement or even fond understanding, I wasn't sure what. 

Eventually, they left us to ourselves. I got up to find the rest room, and when I got back he had moved from the bench around the fire to a small table with seating just for two. I snorted in amusement at this most obvious ploy but admitted I didn't want any more interruptions either. He had retained the afghan, now decorously draped over his shoulders. I slid into the seat opposite him, saw that he had also ordered me a second cognac and a bowl of assorted snacks, and was driven to ask what I had never even wondered before. "Do you believe in a god?" I asked without preamble. Spock and I, we'd never had to stand on ceremony, at least not after our first few months together. "I have no idea what a Vulcan's ideas are on the question of a Supreme Being. You don't have to answer if -- "

He seemed enchanted with my question and lifted his head in interest, in that way he had. "You have changed very little. I believe such a question is one of those that humans are advised against introducing in conversation."

I smiled. "You mean only fools talk about sex, politics, and religion?" I wanted to talk about all three with him. Well, two out of three, anyway. Politics was such a necessity in my career choice that I'd had enough of it.

"Not fools. Shall we say. . .courageous conversationalists? Although I do not know the origin of this advice. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin?"

"It sounds like him," I agreed. "So, you gonna answer me?" 

He cocked his head to the side as if considering, a motion I found endearing. It was strange, being aware of that, reacting to him the same way I might have reacted to an attractive woman who tossed her long hair over her shoulder. Though Spock was anything but one of the women I'd taken over the years to my bed. Still, my body followed where my heart had gone. . . .

"Of course. Vulcan philosophy since Surak has de-emphasized reliance on a belief in a god. Before his teachings gained precedence, there were a number of organized cults that interpreted the mental net of consciousness, of which all Vulcans are aware, in an anthropomorphic way."

I popped a peanut into my mouth. "So much for Vulcans in general past and present. I'm more interested in the Vulcan sitting across from me."

"I am. . .unwilling to take a stand on this subject. While my father's people reject religious practice as an illogical reliance on the fanciful, I am well aware that this galaxy, this universe holds secrets that we have yet to plumb. And you?"

I considered. "About the same, I guess. I was raised Presbyterian, you know, and --"

"No, I did not know."

"I never told you that? I'm surprised."

"There is much that we have yet to learn of each other, Jim," he told me, a promise that he would not remain in ignorance for long. 

It was hard to look away from him, harder still to hold his gaze. I thought that we needed new rules, because relying on the old casual ones, where we'd taken our togetherness for granted, was going to create challenges I didn't know I could meet. "I. . .guess. Anyway, I was raised Presbyterian Christian, but not seriously. I mean, we didn't attend services often. When I went away to the Academy, I never even considered pursuing religion." 

"And now?"

"Now. . .I don't know. I tend to think there is no such thing as a Supreme Being, but then there's this enduring belief in one that we've found wherever we go."

He nodded thoughtfully. "The instinct towards God." 

"Right. Because of. . .what? Sentient beings' fear of death? I think so. But. . .maybe not."

"The Vulcan katra complicates that analysis. We are sure of its existence after death. I have myself communicated with katras of my ancestors lodged in the Hall of Ancient Thought."

"But there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between a Vulcan katra and the concept of a human soul. There isn't a real consciousness there. And the personality, if you want to call it that, is missing, too, am I right?"

"Basically correct. The katra is not a recreation of the being in non-corporeal form. Self-awareness appears to be lacking. The will to act upon the environment is missing."

"It doesn't sound appealing."

"I would not expect you to believe anything differently," he wryly observed. "As I said, you have not changed." 

But I had. My heart told me how much I'd changed.

The night wore on, and midnight came too soon for us to separate. I wanted no part of my bed without him in it; much better to stay up together, sitting where I could see him. I thought of serving on active duty with him and knew this compulsion for his company would have to change, but for now I told myself I was still adjusting; we had been separated for a long time, and this was our true reunion without misunderstanding or duress. 

The clock showed one a.m., and the crowd began to seriously thin. Spock didn't seem to notice and launched into a discussion of what he called the VSA's V'ger project. I guess he felt comfortable enough to talk about it with me now, and we soon became engrossed in speculation about where exactly V'ger had disappeared to. An alternate universe? A different form of reality? The other side of our own galaxy? There was an exhilarating, direct pleasure in talking with him at such length without the intervention of either a chess board or duty between us, and I was loath to give him up though I also felt the minutes ticking away. But two a.m. chimed and there weren't many people left. The bar closed down and as our server wandered among the empty tables picking up glasses, finally Spock unwrapped himself from the afghan. 

I didn't want to let him walk down the mountain by himself in the dark and the cold, even though the storm outside had subsided to mere snow flurries. It would have seemed too much like abandoning him, if only to the elements, and I wanted to make it clear that I had no intention of doing that no matter how hard it became to keep my emotions in check. He didn't object to my suggestion that I go halfway with him, so I thought he understood my motivations. After retrieving my jacket and a hat from my room, I met him standing patiently just within the lobby, where he was all buttoned up, with gloves on and his hood up and his shoulders already hunched against the cold.

We stepped out onto the porch and he shivered. There were patches of wind-blown sky with stars to the north, but to the south and west the clouds were still heavy. The lights from the village reflected against them and then back to the snow pack, giving a surreal glow to the landscape, like Cottman IV, maybe, or Alpha Neuriga V. The air that assaulted my face was bitterly cold, so I briskly zipped up my jacket and jammed my hands into my pockets. 

"Damn it," I swore. "We've going to freeze. I wish I could tell you to just bunk in with me tonight. I don't suppose I could order you to do that, could I?"

"Not and maintain your integrity," Spock said mildly, and he started off down the steps to the trail that would lead to town. "You could simply go back to your room now. It is not as if I am in any danger." 

"No, since we're out here I want to show you something." 

We sidetracked away from the main trail and made our way side by side under the pine trees in that silence that is special in a snowbound world where sound is muffled, in a deep-night world where there are no other people around, in the world where he and I would always walk together. I lifted my sight to the half moon and the tree limbs heavy with new-fallen snow. What would be perfect would be to take his hand. What would be perfect would be to kiss his frosty lips and know his hot breath against my face. . .and feel his desire for me quicken. 

He felt the tempting silence that cocooned us, too, I knew it. I wanted to say something: _Are you still sure? How could we have the kind of evening we've shared and not finish it most profoundly together? I don't know if I can keep this distance._

Our coordinated walk became disjointed and out of rhythm, and I tripped over a hidden root. He steadied me with a hand that caught me lightning-quick before I fell. 

"Thanks," I said quietly. He released me, but now I was hyper-conscious of him, of each step that he took. Even as cold as I was, I felt my cock stirring, and need raced through but didn't warm me. I inhaled sharply. Of course he noticed. Spock noticed everything, but especially about me. His hands burrowed into his pockets as if he were seeking something lost, and his head bowed lower as we went further down the mountain. 

The next twenty meters: they felt like a kilometer. Again an intense feeling of something so wrong, so out-of-joint swept over me, as it had when we'd said good-bye in my apartment. It was so familiar, like powerful déjà vu, and I wondered if we were destined to always succumb to this cycle of discovery and loss, good-bye and despair, of something fundamentally missing for the rest of our lives. 

Just then the outline of the Solstice pile of wood, prepared for sacrificial burning, loomed up as a darker blot of solidity. What I had wanted to share with him. I stopped, feeling only confused and unhappy in every part of me.

"Spock. . . ."

I didn't know what I was going to say. But what I saw froze me before I could speak.

Spock was. . .burning. His whole body was translucently pale and yet golden, as if a candle had been lit from within him. His eyes were sparks, his face unearthily transformed. He slowly, deliberately turned towards me, and then his hands came out of his pockets and hung at his sides. 

_"In what you call sector beta twenty-two."_

The glow that had changed night into day went out like a match being snuffed, but the creature standing before me still wasn't Spock. It might have worn his face and his clothes, but it didn't stand as my friend stood and it sure as hell didn't sound like him, either. 

I took a quick step back and then two steps forward. I knew this voice, the peculiar reverberation and timbre. Just nine weeks before, a member of my crew had spoken to me in the same flat, expressionless tones. Ilia. Despair washed over me, followed by desperation.

"Spock!"

I grabbed his shoulders -- maybe I foolishly thought I could shake him back to himself -- but one swipe of his powerful arm had me impacting face first against the stacked wood. I caught myself as quickly as I could and whirled around to confront him. 

"V'ger?"

_"Coordinates oh nine three by eight two two by oh four four."_

I pushed myself upright and roared. I could have been heard on the other side of the mountain. "What have you done with Spock?"

_"V'ger requires Spock."_

Oh, God. Not like V'ger had required Ilia. No! 

"You can't have him!"

_"We need him."_

We? It was eerily horrible to watch Spock forming these words that were coming from the entity we had thought we'd escaped. 

"Spock isn't yours to take. He's a sentient being with a life of his own!"

_"It is necessary for V'ger to fulfill ourselves through Spock."_

Ourselves?

"Will? Lieutenant Ilia? Are you there?" I searched Spock's face, but there was no shape-shifting, so sign of anyone else, just the familiar, loved-but-forbidden features.

His lips moved again. _"You will meet us at the coordinates. V'ger has need. You will take Spock to us there."_

"What need? Will? Let's find another way. Where are you? Will?" 

_"The entity named Will Decker projects positive feelings towards the entity named Jim Kirk, but there is still the need. V'ger knows that it needs."_

Not the "unit" Jim Kirk. Whatever else the merging had done for V'ger, it had given it a new perspective on biological units. I drew close enough to Spock to touch him. He was looking through me, without any spark of animation. My friend. 

My hands clenched into fists. "What do you need?"

_"Spock will help."_

"There are many ways to fulfill needs." Love expressed through friendship. "Find another way, without taking Spock!" My rising tone was a calculated risk. . .and an indication of my fear.

_"You will assist as instructed. If you do not, V'ger will seek solutions elsewhere. There are many other planets and entities. V'ger might explore them in our need. Or after it is fulfilled as well."_

A threat. There were billions of beings on the inhabited planets of sector beta twenty-two. I couldn't make that choice.

_"We give Spock to you until we meet. He is yours."_

And as abruptly as that, Spock was back. He stumbled straight forward against me, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and I held him up with shaking arms around his shoulders. 

"Spock?" I murmured, and I pulled his face up next to mine. "Are you okay?"

I felt him nodding slowly. "Y. . .yes."

"Did you. . .hear all that?"

"I heard." His teeth were chattering as he slowly moved away from me. "It seems. . .V'ger is not finished with us."

END OF PART ONE


	2. Chapter 2

We materialized in the middle of the Ops Center's night shift, overheated from our dash back up the mountain for my communicator.

A few orders from me had the entire section on red alert. I'd trained my people well, and they didn't even blink to see us coming in together from the cold and the night with urgent information and snow melting on our shoulders. Within five minutes I had fulfilled Spock's request for "sensors, please, Admiral," by having the duty officer set him up in the small room that had the most powerful scanners and communication equipment on Earth. All of Ops by definition was an information gathering center, but that cubbyhole was the best of the best with the most sensitive devices. We had to get corroboration, some hard physical evidence that V'ger had emerged again. I had little doubt we'd find it. I was sick at the thought. 

"Lieutenant Immamura," I snapped to one of the small group who had gathered around me, "contact the head of the project the VSA's begun on V'ger, see if they've got anything new to tell us. I want a synopsis of all their findings, speculations, anything at all. First report in two hours." She nodded and left to get started.

"Sir, your coat? Your shoes? You're dripping on the floor." That was my yeoman, Shirley Houston, ever-practical and already relieving me of my jacket as I stalked across to the equipment that dominated one side of the primary Ops Center space, a wall that was crammed with screens and monitors and detection devices. "I'll have a uniform for you in a minute." 

"Good." Sweat prickled on my chest under my flannel shirt and undershirt. "Wetterstrand, start lingua franca messages and aim them at V'ger's last known position over the Earth." I approached a console and punched in a few lines of data. "Here." 

"Aye, sir." 

"Access _Enterprise_ log entries for the details of our communications two months ago; Commander Spock used an accelerated squirt. Follow his format exactly." 

"Right away." 

I turned towards my office. "Guerero."

"Yes, sir?"

"Is Admiral Nogura on planet?"

"He is, sir."

"Okay. Schedule a meeting with him and the rest of the emergency strategy committee in. . . . What time is it?"

"Oh two hundred thirty-two local time, Admiral."

"Okay. Wake him up in ninety minutes. Hopefully we'll have more information by then. Set up the group to meet at oh five hundred." 

Houston was holding out a uniform as I reached my office door, so with one last senior staff member trailing behind me, I took it, went inside, and began to strip off my damp clothing. I knew how headquarters worked. It would take hours to come to an official decision that to me was a foregone conclusion; I wanted to be ready to move as soon as I could. If V'ger really was after Spock. . . . I shrugged into the white short-sleeved tunic. I was going to use every possible advantage I could find, and time was one of them. 

"Commander Mahendra, I want a 'fleet transport, warp five capable at least, better than that if at all possible. It should have a combination of speed and defensive capability. Offensive weaponry or size won't be important."

"When do you need it, sir?"

I pulled up the gray pants, settled my feet in the attached boots, and snapped the waist. "Six hours. Or sooner." 

Mahendra whistled; he'd been with me for twenty-seven months and we'd never stood on ceremony with each other. "You never ask for anything easy, do you, Admiral?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be asking you. Now, go find me that ship."

I emerged to the center room wishing that I'd had the time to take a shower before I'd dressed, to find my yeoman patiently waiting for me. 

"Houston, find a medical tricorder and do a blood alcohol scan on me. Then I want a detox tablet. Locate a healer for Commander Spock; the same one who examined him at base hospital in October would be ideal. I want him or her here within the hour, and that's number one priority. Oh, and find a uniform for Commander Spock, too." 

"Aye-aye, sir. We've missed you, sir, and I hope you had a good vacation. Anything else?"

"Coffee?"

"Coming up." 

She found me twenty minutes later being debriefed back in my office, the recorder on and one of our analysts asking me clarifying questions from across the desk. The first order of business was to get everything I could remember about the encounter into the records. 

"Sir?" she asked from the doorway. "Sorry for the delay but I had trouble locating the healer. Here's your coffee and Commander Spock sends his respects. He says he has some information."

She followed after me as I strode through the larger Ops center, and the whirring of a medical tricorder told me she was as efficient as she'd always been. "Point oh one seven blood alcohol content, sir. Negligible." 

I held out my free hand anyway, and she slapped the detox tablet into my palm. I swallowed it, followed by a swig of lukewarm coffee. I couldn't afford to have my judgment questioned over the next few hours. 

"I left luggage back at the Timberlands resort outside of Calgary, Shirley. The commander was checked into some other place in a small town nearby, I don't know the name. Go see if you can retrieve it for us." 

"Aye, sir."

I strode into the little room where Spock was and I paused. Although I had casually doffed my clothing and re-dressed without a second thought, I wasn't prepared to see Spock doing the same thing. . . . 

I stepped forward so the door could close behind me. He looked at me steadily as he was settling the strap that 'fleet designers laughingly considered underwear around his bare hips. I reconfirmed what I had known from our long familiarity on the ship -- my lover-of-the-heart was generously sized -- then captured my errant gaze from the fine curve of his buttocks and finished walking up to the main screen. "What have you got?"

Modesty between us on the ship had been both unnecessary and unwise. Nothing could impair our functioning when we were a command team. But that had been before. . . . Seeing him mostly naked, pulling on the ridiculous one-piece gray uniform over skin that I couldn't touch and wouldn't ever caress produced one bright, inflaming moment of desire. A rush of heat. I acknowledged it and then forced it down. There was no time for bitter regrets when we were on duty in the midst of a crisis. V'ger wanted Spock and only God knew what else.

He explained while he finished dressing, and I kept my attention on the boards. Dark energy sensors had been in place throughout the Federation for years; their data were collected and used for a variety of projects. There was still considerable debate among the scientists over whether some of the unobserved energy and matter predicted for our own universe was actually contained in other, alternate universes -- called bubble universes by the scientists -- although the _Enterprise_ had gone a long way towards providing evidence when four of us had traded places with our Mirror counterparts. 

Spock had analyzed the last hours of data, which might have been ignored if not for his insight -- who else would have thought to check exactly there? -- and found some extraordinarily readings. He sealed the seam on the side of his uniform and came to stand next to me, indicating one particular bright readout.

"These factors are unusual: energy composition, vectors, and neutrino concentration. Once known constants are factored out, there is a point two three percent marked change. It is as if there is an accumulation of considerable power moving in a ripple just under the surface of our known universe, threatening to distort or damage the fabric that separates our bubble of existence from others." 

"Can we link this to V'ger?" I gestured toward the glowing figures.

"I believe so, Admiral. Although this is but preliminary data, the power emanations, difficult as they are to measure, have harmonic overtones that are eerily similar to what we encountered just nine weeks ago."

"It's really happening," I breathed. "V'ger is on the move." At last I allowed myself to look at him, safely clothed and hidden from my view. "Headed towards?"

"In the direction of sector beta twenty-two."

"For. . .what? What does it want now? What does it want from you?" Frustration colored my words as I took in the stoic lines of his face; I felt torn in two. I was Admiral, Starfleet, Chief of Operations, and I would do anything I could to protect Federation citizens from V'ger, including using any member of 'fleet as ammunition or as a foot soldier in this twenty-third century war. I'd done it often enough over the last three years, moving living pawns on a galaxy-wide chess board without letting myself count the cost. 

But I was also Jim Kirk, friend to Spock since I could not be more to him: lover, spouse, and bondmate. 

I half-turned away from him. "Any theories?"

He hesitated before answering. "I do not know what I could have that V'ger does not." 

"It's practically omnipotent. A god in any other time or place."

"We have little data. Until we can discover the purpose of this summons. . . ."

I rounded towards him. "Spock, this can't be good! V'ger could destroy a planet in minutes. A whole system, so many beings. . . . You know it came close to destroying Earth."

"Agreed. We must assume the worst."

I said what I feared the most. "The last two sentient life forms V'ger directly encountered are dead."

"Or subsumed within itself. V'ger identified itself as a multiple consciousness. 'We' instead of 'I.'"

"They were buried deep. Entity Decker. Not even a mention of Entity Ilia. Spock, I fear what V'ger could do to billions of people, but. . .do you become a sacrifice for them? I don't want you to become a buried entity."

"Nor do I," he said soberly. "I believe I came close to that state when on Vulcan. I discovered. . .it was not best for me."

"Or for me. I've just gotten you back. I don't want to lose you again." 

"Jim. . . . I do not wish to do this. Please believe me." He grasped both my wrists and brought them up between us, and I registered how much higher his body temperature was over mine. "I am different now then when I went out to V'ger before."

"I know that. It's just that. . . ." I couldn't get the vision of Decker and Ilia going up in one indistinguishable flame out of my head. 

"And we do not know why I am being called. Decker and Ilia's fate will not necessarily be mine."

I searched his face. "It might be. I'm not sure V'ger knows how to communicate in other ways." 

"Perhaps it does, now that it is more than what it was before."

"So. We hang our hopes on that? Not much of a strategic plan, Commander." 

"Perhaps. Until we have a reason to formulate another one. You know that I will go to V'ger," he said soberly. 

"Your duty."

"And. . .you know that I will do more if I must."

"If you must," I said quietly. 

"There may be no other option."

I looked down at where he held me. "There are always possibilities." 

"Not always good ones. What V'ger wants, it can take. I will not have the fate of billions on my conscience." 

He released me, but for long seconds we stayed where we were, with my hands suspended in the air as we stared at each other. 

"I've got a healer on the way," I finally said. "I want you checked over, make sure that. . .that glow hasn't hurt you, and then I want the two of you to meld. For verification. Nogura's going to want that. I know you aren't supposed to yet for a while, but -- "

He was nodding in agreement. "I concur. It must be done. With the careful work of a healer, it can be done safely. Plus, I have not yet been debriefed." 

"Sanderson is waiting for you in my office for that. Can you go there now?"

"Yes, although I wish to return to confirm these preliminary figures." 

"Okay, then. Go get debriefed. In the meantime, I'm got some admirals to call. We're set up to meet Nogura at five hundred hours." 

"Yes, sir." He got as far as the door, then, "Jim?"

There was a subtle resonance in his voice that made me give him even more attention than I normally would. "Yes, Spock?"

He lifted a brow at me in the old way. "Where is your office?"

I smiled at him and felt a lot better. He and I had been the best command team in Starfleet, once upon a time. We had found solutions to a lot of impossible problems. "Second turn to the right, then straight on. . .down the hall. You can't miss it."

"Indeed," he murmured. "I will not." 

I watched him leave. God, I loved this man. I needed him with an urgency to match anything V'ger could conjure. 

I straightened my shoulders. The bright dawn was still hours away. 

 

***** *****

 

The meeting was just as difficult as I had anticipated, and it highlighted for me how much I wanted to get permanently out of the headquarters environment. I had already moved on, I thought, away from the politicking and the maneuvering that took place even in the most urgent situations as a matter of course. Harry Morrow, with whom I'd always enjoyed an uneasy relationship at best, took the opportunity to try to undercut my position, undoubtedly thinking that he was shoring up his own in the process. I didn't care if he did. Morrow already had more power than I ever wanted, a type of power I'd never valued.

Nogura was no help and the other two rear admirals there -- Vasquez and Shapiro -- were just backdrop to the power struggle we enacted whenever this committee met. The fleet admiral was playing the silent game, watching Harry and me face off from where he sat at the end of the long table, pitting the two of us against each other as he'd tried to do the past year. I knew Nogura wasn't totally satisfied with Morrow as an heir apparent, and that he'd been pushing me forward not as an alternative but as some sort of whip to force the man into a different mold. Of course Harry fiercely resented the unspoken comparison and had reacted against me predictably. 

"You think both of us had the same hallucination?" I asked Morrow more than a little incredulously. "That we're playing some sort of game here?"

"No game, but you've got to admit you're asking for an immediate deployment with almost no evidence." 

"No evidence? How else do you explain these readings?" I asked, exasperated, and I threw the printout from the dark matter sensors across the table before rotating my chair -- thus effectively turning my back on him -- and stalking to the coffee station in the corner. 

"Science isn't exactly my forte," he dismissed. "But even I can see that you're claiming that V'ger isn't in our universe anymore. That's what these figures boil down to, don't they?" 

"Not in our universe, that is correct," Spock put in calmly. "However, undoubtedly capable of communicating with us." He was there officially as technical support, as normally the committee members met alone without even a recording equipment or secretary. Nogura wanted opinions freely expressed. I had insisted Spock attend, though. It was his life we were discussing. 

"What's our universe got that V'ger doesn't have. . .wherever it is now?"

I slipped back into my seat with a hot cup of caffeine and my temper more firmly in check. "That's the question. We don't know why it wants Commander Spock." 

"Translator?" Nogura put in quietly. "He's been in touch with V'ger mind to mind." 

"Fortunate coincidence, isn't it?" Morrow added. "The one person who's indispensable in this crisis just happens to be James Kirk's former first officer, and the two of you just happened to be sharing some leave time together. . . ."

Spock caught on to what Morrow was implying and cut right across that bullshit. "You have not formed an accurate assessment of Admiral Kirk's character," my former first officer severely told him, with all the certitude of a Vulcan convinced of his logic, "if you believe there is any chance that the admiral would be motivated by petty concerns to enhance his position within Starfleet. Nor would I be party to such actions."

"I meant nothing of the sort, Commander Spock," Morrow told him. "I can only assume your inexperience with human emotions would lead you to draw such a conclusion." 

Nogura harrumphed loudly. "Can we initiate contact with V'ger?"

I shook my head, feeling and denying the first prickling of fatigue. "We're broadcasting lingua code, but there isn't any response." 

"I meant," the old man gestured with his vein-heavy hands, "the same kind of contact as you say happened early this morning. Through Commander Spock." 

"How?" I asked bluntly. "It was V'ger talking through him, not the other way around."

"We do not understand the mechanism," Spock put in. "Until we do -- "

" -- we're on V'ger's time schedule, not ours, -- "

" -- and we are forced to treat the scant information revealed as fact."

I hitched forward over my coffee mug. "This is the machine, creature, whatever you want to call it, that came close to destroying the Earth. To take it less than seriously would be a mistake."

"A grave mistake. I concur with Admiral Kirk." 

Morrow scowled his disagreement at this joint analysis from the former command team of the _Enterprise_ , but for once he stayed silent. 

Nogura punched one of the buttons in front of him and a file was displayed on the center screen for everyone to see. "I notice you called in a healer, Kirk. For independent corroboration." 

I nodded. "Short of putting the commander under a psychotricorder scan -- "

"Useless with Vulcans," Vasquez put in, the first time he'd contributed that morning.

" -- it seemed reasonable to provide what evidence we could." 

"A therapeutic meld?" Nogura asked. When I nodded, he went on. "I thought Commander Spock was unable to sustain mental contact. Or did the debriefing reports after his initial contact with V'ger. . .mis-state?" 

"I am capable of mental contact, however I have been advised -- "

"He shouldn't do it," I said. "He needs to rest, mentally. His brain was practically short-circuited when he went out to meld with V'ger the first time."

"Nevertheless, the need in this case was sufficient."

"I see," the CinC said. "The affidavit from the healer states that the events in question did, in fact, happen." 

"Or so the healer believes," Morrow put in. "Forgive me, Commander Spock, but if you were so profoundly affected as to be 'short-circuited' earlier, why should we believe that you are of sound mind now? I don't pretend to understand the Vulcan mind arts, but couldn't you have convinced the healer because you are delusionally positive the contact took place? And then you were able to convince Admiral Kirk of the same?" 

Spock nodded, projecting a great sense of calm and determination. "You may entertain those suspicions, of course. I know of no other way of verifying events." 

"Events that took place at three o'clock in the morning. When the two of you just happened to be walking down the mountainside together. What the hell were you doing?" 

"We were on leave," I told him, trying not to grit my teeth.

"And I suspect a fair amount of alcohol had been consumed. Have both of you been tested this morning?"

Spock shifted forward in his chair and placed the flat of both hands resolutely on the table. "I am a Vulcan. I consumed no artificial substances that would impair judgment and reasoning. Even under the circumstances of an extended leave, Admiral Kirk has never, to my knowledge and direct experience, over-indulged. He is a casual drinker and does not use recreational drugs. He could scarcely have compiled his exemplary record as captain of a starship otherwise. Does this answer your question, Admiral Morrow?" 

I did some button punching of my own, and the results of Houston's tricorder scan of my blood-alcohol levels were displayed on the screen. I let them stand without explanation. "We've got a short window of opportunity to get Commander Spock to sector beta twenty-two before V'ger. . .emerges. Every half hour counts." 

"Do we have an ETA?" Nogura asked.

"It is difficult to extrapolate from the readings, as there is not direct correspondence from our bubble universe to another, however -- "

Morrow smacked a palm on the table. "Bubble universes! God help us!"

"God helps those who help themselves, is, I believe, an old saying," Spock blandly provided. "I estimate that V'ger will emerge into our universe in three or four days. Greater precision is not possible."

Nogura took us all in with a glance. "All right. V'ger's threatening us again, it seems. This time implying that if we don't give it what it wants that we'll lose a lot more than ships and stations, we'll lose planets and their populations. We've got to prevent that at any cost. Recommendations, gentlemen?" 

_"In what you call sector beta twenty-two."_

I slapped at the controls in front of me. "Computer, audio and visual recording, on! Bio monitors, on!" and then I swiveled my chair to face Spock, who was seated next to me. Once again, my friend had disappeared within the rigid posture and hard, determined expression that I'd learned wasn't really him. At least this time I didn't try to shake him. "V'ger? Commander Decker?"

Behind me I heard *Holy angels!* from Morrow, and then a shushing sound, undoubtedly from Nogura. 

I saw a swallow ripple the length of Spock's throat, and then he rotated his chair until we sat face to face, knee to knee in the sudden and complete silence. No one else in that room mattered, but it wasn't just the two of us. Five beings actually confronted each other within our two bodies. 

_"V'ger requires Spock."_ His voice was impossibly deep, and as expressionless as it had been when he'd boarded the _Enterprise_. Hearing Spock utter his own name caused a hard knot to form in my chest.

"Let us help you in some other way," I said evenly. I didn't even think of deferring to Nogura's authority. "Life is precious to us." 

_"We understand life now and what life requires for fulfillment. We must fulfill ourselves."_

V'ger had already proven it could talk in circles. I tried again. "How do you intend to fulfill yourselves with Commander Spock?"

_"The space that is us is incomplete. There is pain in the distances, and the distances cannot be ignored. The biological units suffer."_

I seized on that. "Ilia? Will? Are you there? What can we do to help you?"

Slowly Spock turned to stare down at the tabletop. His hands came up to grasp its edge, then his fingers straightened as if reaching for something. This time he spoke in a hoarse whisper. 

_"Jim! It's not right. We left too soon."_ Unmistakably, that was Will Decker speaking. 

"Will!"

_"Help us."_

"We'll try, but we can't let V'ger destroy any more planets or ships, and no more lives. You've got to help us, too -- "

Abruptly, Spock stood, sending his chair jerking backwards, and whatever part of Decker had surfaced just as quickly disappeared. _"V'ger is the Creator now, but Spock is required for creation. Jim Kirk must bring him to us."_

I got up to face him and asked the unimaginable. "And if we don't?"

_"If we are not fulfilled through Spock, we will continue our search, as we searched before. The entities named Will Decker and Ilia do not wish this. They would regret destruction. So Spock must become one with us instead. Bring him."_

I was ready this time and managed to catch Spock around the waist as he toppled forward and almost smacked forehead-first into the table. By the time I'd awkwardly pulled him up he was himself again, gasping as he'd done before, as if he'd run a long race that taxed even his Vulcan stamina. He stepped away from me, and resolution was in the way his lips tightened. 

_Spock must become one with us._ There was no mistaking this time what V'ger meant. Dear God, how was I going to let my friend go?

END OF PART TWO


	3. Chapter 3

Sleep eluded me. Peace did, too. I paced the length of the tiny cabin assigned to me in _The Solar Queen_ and cast a quick glance at the bunk, but only because I refused to check the chronometer again. It was just before oh two hundred, almost three days since we'd left orbit. Back on Earth's northern hemisphere, the longest night was approaching, and we'd be reaching the coordinates V'ger gave us in less than ten hours. I was tired. I was pumped with adrenalin. I was trying hard not to think, but thinking was the only thing left to me. That, and feeling. 

I stopped in the middle of the room and rubbed my eyes with the heels of both my hands. The deck literally vibrated beneath my feet, and the engines moaned with a sound that I'd never heard on a 'fleet vessel before as the ship raced across space at warp nine. The Queen was different, a research ship outfitted with powerful engines and even more powerful shields. She was able to fly deep into the gravity field of a star, take readings incredibly close to the core, and then extricate herself from dangerous heat and radiation. The combination of speed and defensive capability made her perfect to take us towards a rendezvous we didn't want. 

Except I knew that believing even these shields could protect us from V'ger was wishful thinking. I wouldn't fall into that trap. I hadn't. Once we'd beamed aboard, I had spent every moment I could selecting and then organizing support ships to meet us at the break-out point Spock had spent hours confirming, including getting the starship _Hood_ there at top warp speed. The two of us had brainstormed long-distance with my Ops Center staff about what might happen, about what it was that V'ger might be looking for, and trying to anticipate any wild demand it might make. We'd gone over and over the _Enterprise_ records to try and analyze V'ger's point of view. I'd become an expert in Will Decker and Lieutenant Ilia's lives and picked apart their 'fleet service records with two different psychologists. 

All of which produced no reassurance but instead gave me the feeling that I wasn't prepared, that no one could be prepared for this meeting. My so-called victory over V'ger two months before was an illusion. All I'd done then was cautiously move forward, with no more plan or influence than a gnat flying in a tornado. 

This time, I knew exactly what I stood to lose. He was sleeping, I hoped, in the cabin next to mine.

My own rest seemed a hopeless goal, and this small cabin that had been the chief scientist's and her husband's before I'd come aboard seemed suddenly claustrophobic. I tugged at my tunic, pushed my fingers through my hair, and strode out into the corridor, headed anywhere I could dissipate my nervous energy through pacing. 

A starship like the _Enterprise_ could not afford the diurnal rhythms of night and day; all three duty shifts had performed in the same bright environment as we had winged across the galaxy in our search for new life and civilizations and in defense of the Federation. But smaller ships, ships with a more peaceful purpose, were able to cater to the typical being's preference for defined times of light and darkness. So I rapidly walked through spaces dimmed as if it were dusk, and I encountered no other duty personnel to distract my whirling thoughts. 

It took just a few minutes to traverse the length of the ship to the stern; The Queen typically carried fewer than thirty crew plus a lot of massive equipment. I slowed and then touched the bulkhead with the flat of my palm. The shuddering metal, stressed because of our great speed, was no consolation. No matter when we reached our destination, we'd get there sooner than I wanted to. 

I turned, intending to pace some more, but the captain of this ship stood silently blocking my path. 

"Captain." 

"Admiral." 

Spock and I had materialized in the small transporter room of the _Queen_ just fifteen minutes past the six hours I'd given Mahendra. Captain Altena Jordan had been waiting for us there, looking none too pleased that she'd been denied the scheduled maintenance she'd returned to Earth for and had been sent instead on what was dangerous taxi duty, far from the scientific explorations she was devoted to. I could spare her no sympathy.

"Permission to come aboard, Captain?"

I had actually seen her hands clench, but she had been all formality and Starfleet polish as she replied, "Of course, Admiral. Welcome to _The Solar Queen_." 

We had stepped down the transporter room steps. "Acknowledged, Captain."

"It's good to see you again, sir," she responded. 

She had been lying, and it had showed. Altena Jordan had been one of my wife's closest friends, as dark-skinned and dark-haired as Lori had been fair, as acerbic as my wife had been soft-spoken. She was much thinner than Uhura but was the same type of African woman, with a luminous complexion. Altena had never liked me, maybe because I was the first man to coax Lori into even a one year marriage contract. They'd loved each other, I was sure, in that inexplicable, platonic way between women that I'd never understood.

Altena had taken her measure of me over the dinner table in the apartment I had shared with Lori, during some of the social engagements my wife had arranged in the time we had been together. I knew I'd been found wanting. I think she detected from the beginning that our marriage was mainly convenience on my part and wishful thinking on Lori's, and that angered her straightforward, determined soul. I had nothing against Captain Jordan and had even been grateful that Lori had someone to talk to when we'd separated. That hadn't lasted long, since Altena was sent out on assignment a month later. She hadn't been able to attend Lori's funeral; most of the time, members of Starfleet mourned their friends from a distance. 

As Spock and I had vacated the transporter pods, I'd seen Jordan's gaze flick over him, appraising, and then return to me, questioning. She would have heard the story of how he'd come back from Vulcan to the _Enterprise_ , and I didn't know how much Lori had guessed or told her. But I hadn't given a damn if she drew the correct conclusions, and I'd brusquely told her I required the use of her briefing room and that she was to immediately initiate her flight plan. I had been kinder and more understanding with ensigns, but my patience was stretched thin. Any softness left in me wasn't for her.

Since then, I'd seen her only during the minimal briefing I'd given her about where we were going and why. Now, here she was confronting me in the dimness of her ship's deepest passage. She was a ghost in her gray uniform, looming out of the dark towards me.

"I want to talk to you off the record. Sir."

I didn't need this. But short of brushing past her in silence, I had to answer her. "All right. Here?"

She shrugged. "Why not? None of us might survive the next few hours."

I was struck by her courage. Jordan had taken a different path than I through 'fleet, choosing to serve on scientific vessels that were rarely on the front lines. Yes, her line of work carried its own risks -- ships like _The Solar Queen_ had been caught in solar flares, had plunged into a photosphere never to return -- but she hadn't ever faced an active enemy like the Klingons or the Tholians. Or V'ger. 

"I have every intention of surviving," I told her gently. "You should, too."

"The Vulcans have a saying. _Kaiidth._ What will be, will be." She lifted her chin. "I'm sure your Commander Spock could correct my pronunciation. You probably could, too." 

It was too late for this. "Altena, why not say what you want to say? So both of us can get some sleep."

"Were you and Lori going to reconcile?"

That startled me. "No. What made you think that?"

"She died beaming up to you. I thought. . . ."

"You thought wrong," I said harshly. "I don't know why she volunteered for duty during the crisis. Nobody will ever know." I remembered too well the images of Lori and Sonak disintegrating within the beam and only wished I could forget them. Two more souls to weigh on me. 

"You didn't call her to come to you?"

"No. I'm sorry." 

She took a step closer to me in the dim hallway, aggressively, with her slender shoulders tense. "Sorry about what? That she died? She never would have thought of joining the _Enterprise_ without you there. I hope you feel guilty about that. Or are you sorry you were a lousy husband? You're not going to be any better with him, you know."

Weariness washed over me. There was another feeling, too, one that wanted to grab her and push her against the bulkhead, to shake sense into her and make her see things my way, the way things really were. . . .

But instead I said, as evenly as I could, "Captain. I believe my briefing with you was incomplete."

"What did you leave out, Jim?" I could have brought her up on charges for her insolence. "Doesn't seem a thing an admiral ought to do." 

I forced myself to say it. "Commander Spock is probably going to die when we meet V'ger. I'm going to do my damndest to make sure that doesn't happen, but. . . . The odds are not good. For him. And yet. . . . He's never thought twice about completing this mission. In the face of that, does anything you think about us really matter?"

Her lips twisted in an obvious grimace. "So you're going to kill him just like you killed her. You're hell on lovers, Admiral." 

"We're not. . ." It was half-way out before I realized I didn't want to say this to her, nor acknowledge it to myself again, but I was trapped by my own honesty and continued, ". . .lovers." That was it, I wasn't going to stay there with her. "Good-night, Captain." 

I was five meters past her when I heard her softly say, "Lori wanted you to be happy. Good-night, Jim." 

It was late, and whether I wanted to confront my nightmares or not, I owed it to everybody -- to Captain Jordan, to the crew of this ship, to the planetary populations of sector beta twenty-two, and to the man who was the pulse of my heart -- to get some sleep. There was a sleeping pill in my cabin, and I intended to take it. 

 

***** *****

 

He came to me that night as I drifted through drug-induced slumber. The opening swish of the door mingled with my dreams of snow endlessly falling, and the sound of his footfalls was, in that suspended time before I came fully awake, the kiss of the breeze through the pine trees. I expected to be blinded by the cold winter sunlight when I opened my eyes. But no. I took in my darkened-for-sleep cabin, eclipsed by the even darker form of my friend. 

I tensed and then stilled. He had not buzzed for entry, he had not raised the lights. He came to me in silence and shadows. I remained where I was, exposed in my briefs on the mattress with the cover kicked to the floor, and watched him walk to me. 

He came up next to my bed, but I couldn't see his face, just the outline of his body. That seemed right: I couldn't ever have all of him. But he was here. For now, for the next ten hours or so, he was still here.

I let my eyes range over his slender silhouette -- the hint of a pointed ear, the sloping shoulders that were still so strong, the softness of sleeping pants and shirt that obscured his body -- and I thought: _do you know how I fear for you? Do you know how I mourn for what we'll never have? What will I do when. . .if. . .if you're gone?_ Words stuck in my constricted throat.

I heard him breathing. A comfort. I tried to impress the moments into my memory so I'd never forget: the night he'd breathed over me. 

I raised my hand to him, and after a stillness that was not hesitation, he took it between both of his. The shock of his heated skin against mine confirmed that this was real. No dream. No wishful thinking. His long, fine fingers cradled mine.

I wanted to pull him down on top of me, but I wouldn't. I'd have to be satisfied with what he would give. A moment later the mattress bent with his weight as he sat down by my hip. Our joined hands settled, with graceful slowness, on my bare chest, over my heart, and I swallowed hard. 

How improbable that my Spock, so filled with integrity, would violate our unspoken vows and come to my bed in the night. How inevitable that he would. 

He untangled just one hand from our embrace. As he had done weeks before, a feather-light fingertip dusted down the side of my face. This alone he gave me, but, oh, it was a gift. He seemed to take forever to trace a path over my eyebrow, down my cheek and then to my chin, and I abandoned myself to his touch. If life unfolded the way it should, this would be but the beginning of how we would love one another. But. . .the beginning had been when he'd entered this room in silence. 

In silence his finger measured the length of my neck and skimmed over my chest to return to our joined hands. I brought my other hand up to complete our circuit and gripped him as hard as I could. He squeezed back. 

_//I do not want to leave you.//_ His words whispered through my mind, and the sensation was so familiar even though we hadn't shared thoughts in years. 

_//You shouldn't be melding with anyone yet. Do you know how much I love you?//_

He rocked back with a soft sigh, and then slowly, ever so slowly, my friend lay down next to me. 

I wasn't strong enough to say _No_ to him. I knew only that I needed. Our hands remained clasped, but I still couldn't see him and it wasn't nearly enough. So I gathered him up in my arms until his head was pillowed on my shoulder, and his fingers splayed against my chest. I rested my free hand, the one that wasn't gloriously holding him, in the short strands of his midnight hair.

We stayed like that, doing nothing but existing close to one another, for long minutes.

The gods tempt us by showing us what heaven might be like. Nirvana, paradise, shakaree, visions that would always remain outside the reach of puny mortals. I was achingly hard, and Spock must have known it. It was taking every ounce of control I had not to taste his warm mouth, not to roll over and push my cock against him, and I knew I was leaking pre-ejaculate even though I hadn't been touched. 

But the front of his body was pressed full length against my side, and he was unaroused even as I trembled for him. He would never offer more than this. He would if he could. 

The minutes passed too quickly. Maybe half an hour? Closer to V'ger. 

Eventually I felt the tension in Spock's body that meant he intended to push away from me, and I forced myself to open my arm and let him go. He sat on the edge of the bed with his head bowed, and my gaze caressed his shadow. I would not hinder him. Then he turned, leaned over, and rested his lips against my forehead. 

This simple feeling. Diverted into something it wasn't, its truth dammed up and not permitted expression, but still there.

He was halfway to the door when he stopped, facing it, and he spoke. 

"You asked me if I believed in a Supreme Being. I do not know. But I do believe it likely that a typical death would bring with it an end to consciousness. . .and its attendant pain. I am not likely to be granted that favor. To be taken in by V'ger will confer a form of immortality, will it not? And the continuation of consciousness with all its pain and its regrets. I will have my regret. . .always."

Then he was gone, leaving me in darkness I could never illuminate myself. 

 

***** *****

 

Twenty-seven minutes after we arrived at the coordinates that he had specified on a mountainside four days before, Spock stepped back from his position over the scanners on _The Solar Queen’s_ bridge. He tucked his hands neatly behind his back, the way he'd done in front of me thousands of times before, and announced, "V'ger is approaching." 

I double-checked the viewscreen. It showed nothing that it hadn't shown before, but I didn't doubt that V'ger would appear soon. 

The _Queen's_ bridge was configured differently from those of ships of the line, though it used the same monochromatic color scheme of grays, blacks, and whites. Her nerve center was long and narrow and marked by six silver consoles that stretched across the width of the room and descended down broad steps to the viewscreen at the far end. In order from the top there were command, helm, communications, and then three wide science and scanner control boards. Jordan had been nervously pacing along the back row where she normally ruled not just the crew on her bridge but also had control of the all-important shields. I had taken possession of the passage down the left side, and I'd restlessly wandered the twelve broad steps down and back a few times before I stationed myself to the side of the scanner console in the middle, where Spock was working his magic. He'd spent a portion of the last two days reconfiguring the instruments to register V'ger's unique signature. I'd heard him trying to explain it to the science officer, Lieutenant Commander Yahola, about the bubble universe and how he'd been tracking the living machine from afar. Yahola had reacted with awe and respect that had made me fiercely proud. I'd called this extraordinary man back from Gol.

Yahola, with his black crew-cut and seeming to be too young for his rank, was staffing the station in front of Spock. "Confirmed. I estimate time of breakthrough as. . .four minutes? Commander, do you agree?"

Spock re-seated himself. "Agreed. Estimating three minutes, forty seconds to materialization." 

I addressed the communications officer behind him. "Lieutenant Rosenthal, what's the current status of the support ships?"

"Seven ships in position, sir," she answered. "Fanned out around us in a circle that's two hundred billion kilometers in diameter."

I took a few steps into the equipment well, leaned over my own first officer's shoulder to see the readout he was most depending on, and considered. "Alert all shipboard personnel that breakthrough is imminent; they should maintain their stations and prepare for turbulence. Then tell the support ships to fall away from us another twenty billion kilometers." 

"Acknowledged, Admiral, an additional twenty billion klicks."

There was a rustle of uniform behind me. I turned to see the youngest and least experienced crewmember on the bridge, helmsman Lieutenant Genner, all long arms and legs and raw nerves, staffing the station directly in front of the captain. "But if we need to call them in for help, then -- "

I thought I'd better make it clear. "Those ships aren't there to help us, Lieutenant. They are there to observe and get information back to headquarters if we can't. They don't have sufficient firepower; nobody does. Even the _Hood_ doesn't have enough firepower. There really isn't any opposing V'ger."

"No opposing? Then -- "

"Lieutenant, Admiral Kirk saved the Earth from this exact creature two months ago," Jordan assured in brisk tones. "Follow orders and we'll be fine." 

I could hear his gulp. "Aye, sir." 

What I wouldn't have given to have my old crew here with us. They'd been scattered across the Federation beyond retrieval at the eleventh hour, though, and I'd opted to go with the people who were most familiar with this ship. These untried crewmembers were science support specialists, true, but they'd gotten us there in time.

"Readings, Mister Spock?" 

"Becoming less ambiguous, Admiral." Spock was always a rock of strength in a crisis, even this most personal crisis. "Less than two percent uncertainty factor now. Assuming it is the size we predict, V'ger will emerge within one hundred thousand kilometers of our position." 

"Close enough to kiss," I murmured.

"I find that rather unlikely," he responded, in the same way he'd always had. 

"I'm registering Sanchez radiation, sir!" Yahola contributed in great excitement. "Four point seven megabecquels. Four point nine! Five point two!"

"That is sufficient, Mister Yahola," Spock told him. "As we discussed, the radiation should stabilize at ten point six. Admiral, another minute to breakthrough."

I took a few steps to stand directly behind him. In the white-bright lighting of this place, I could look down on the thick strands of his dark hair, where my fingers had been tangled in the night. I gripped the back of his chair and ran through the scenarios we'd imagined and the actions we might be able to take. First and foremost. . . .

"Captain Jordan, no shields."

"Acknowledged, Admiral, no shields."

. . .and then many other possibilities. I had to engage V'ger in a dialogue somehow, and that would most likely be through Spock. Quickly, too, as our exchanges had been so brief. I had to address the machine with the idea of getting through to Decker or Ilia. We already knew they were some sort of influence: they would regret planetary destruction. I had to make them unable to contemplate it. And maybe they would regret the loss of Spock's life, too. 

Less than a minute. I glanced from the screen down to him. "Got those transponders in place?" 

He nodded, never taking his attention from the instruments in front of him. "All five that you insisted on, redundantly. Both hands and feet, one in my side."

"Are the signals strong?"

He pointed to a display that clearly showed his living status. 

"Mister Yahola, are you ready?"

"Ready on your orders, sir. We'll be able to track Commander Spock over the river or through the woods." 

A ripple of nervous amusement went through the others, but my apprehension wouldn't allow me to even register how he'd tried to diffuse tension. Good try, just. . .not for me.

Spock adjusted a dial. "Distortion envelope beginning." 

Seconds now. Somehow my hands found their way from the back of the chair to Spock's shoulders. The action reassured me, but I knew holding onto him wouldn't keep him safe. Nevertheless, I allowed myself this weakness, this small tactile memory, and he didn't shrug me away. _Good luck,_ I thought, though I didn't say it out loud. I would say nothing that sounded like good-bye. 

My gaze was riveted on the viewscreen. One moment it showed only the nothingness of space pierced by the splashes of color that were stars, comets, and nebula, and the next. . . .

The ship bucked like a wild horse, but we were all expecting the displacement phenomenon. I held on tight to my anchor, kept to my feet as the ship righted itself, and watched as V'ger took form before us. 

As Spock had predicted, it was much smaller than it had been. The gigantic outer fields had been stripped away, and what was left was more the size of a satellite, maybe half the dimensions of the Earth's moon, though irregularly shaped with glowing belts of radiation extending in all directions. There was the hint of a solid core that appeared and then was obscured, darker than the writhing flares of energy against which I had to squint until the screen adjusted the brilliance down. 

"Okay?" I asked the bridge at large, though I was really addressing the central actor in this play we were just beginning.

"Affirmative, Admiral," he murmured, but then abruptly he twisted in his seat to look up at me. I registered shock in his eyes before he said, "Jim, it's not what we. . . ." 

I stepped back to give him room to stand and watched the transformation again. Only this time he didn't become rigid and remote, but somehow more fluid, more graceful. His gaze turned very soft, and he reached out a hand to me, as one of my crew had done before on the _Enterprise_ 's bridge.

_"Admiral Kirk."_

"Ilia?" I grabbed his hand with both of mine, grasped it with all my strength and determination. I wasn't going to let go. He didn't grip me back.

_"V'ger needs this."_

The words came out in a higher register, much more like Ilia's real voice than her simulacrum's had been. 

_"Ilia and Will thank you. We are not complete and V'ger is not at rest."_

"What is it you need? Tell me and we'll help you."

_"Spock will have what we need."_ She/he tugged at our handclasp but didn't pull completely away. 

"We can help you without loss of life and without any destruction. Don't hurt him and don't inflict harm on any other life forms in this universe!"

_"V'ger knows this way."_

"Ilia, don't hurt Spock! Don't let him be transformed as you were, as Decker was. Don't destroy any planets, any ships, any people! Find a different way! Ilia!"

_"Spock will be with us."_

"Whole. Alive," I insisted. "Do you hear me?"

_"Good-bye, Admiral."_

"No more destruction! Not for him, not for anybody!"

For just an instant , Spock's face changed. He wasn't Ilia anymore. . . . "Good-bye, Jim."

"No!"

Just as it had happened before, the bridge was engulfed in blinding light, lit by the flaming candle that suddenly was all of Spock's body. Discordant noise assaulted us, so loud that I could feel the sound buffeting my body. Yahola clasped his hands over his ears. But I. . .I was holding on to Spock for all my life and for his. With his strength, he could have ripped away from me easily, and certainly V'ger could have taken him away in the span of a thought. 

I bellowed above the blaring sound. "Don't go! Talk to me! Tell me what V'ger needs!"

His lips moved. I knew he was trying to tell me something important, something related to what he'd said right before he'd been possessed, but I couldn't read what it was through the lightning flickering across his face. 

"Ilia! Will! Help us! Don't -- "

I felt the whisper impression of a mind-touch, as if he were urgently trying to initiate a meld to communicate, and then, again like before, silence. Spock had disappeared. 

I staggered backwards, losing my balance, impacting against the far bulkhead and then landing awkwardly on the tiered passageway I had paced with such fear and impatience minutes before. I stayed right where I was on the deck, fighting the crushing weight of defeat on my chest. 

The whole exchange couldn't have lasted more than a minute. I'd said so little. Had V'ger. . .had Ilia really heard and understood? Or had Spock already experienced the last moment in his own body? Was he my sacrifice to a god I didn't believe in?

_I will not have the fate of billions on my conscience._

And I wouldn't let Spock's unique, vibrant, living flame be absorbed into V'ger's conflagration, not without exhausting every resource. Time to put some of the contingency plans we had prepared into action. I jumped back to my feet. "Mister Yahola, are the transponders still working?" I practically shouted. 

He wasn't even at his post. He must have retreated from it down the steps in the reality of V'ger's presence. It took way too long for him to get back to his station, insert the earpiece, and assess the readings. "Yes, sir."

"Can you get a transporter lock?" 

It seemed to take him forever to find the answer. "Uh, I don't think so. The signal's not strong enough to beam him aboard -- "

"I didn't ask you that. Can you get any sort of transporter lock?"

Perplexed, he gave me a quick glance but answered readily enough. "Yes, sir." 

"Then -- "

He was peering at the display again. "I. . .It's not there now. We've lost him."

I'd made a career out of letting competent people do their jobs under my command, but I couldn't contain myself now. I strode over to his station and stared down at the data. "Lost him? You just said the transponders were working."

"They were! All five signals. But a second ago. . . . I'm sorry, sir, they're just not there anymore." 

I told myself it meant nothing. V'ger was capable of just about anything, including keeping any life form alive under the most perilous circumstances, even if transponders were ripped out from under a person's skin. 

Or. . . .

"You've been recording, right?" I asked tightly.

"Of course, sir."

"Then we're going to transport a pocket of air to the last location you registered. I want V'ger to know we're serious about keeping Commander Spock alive. Take it, ten cubic meters, from the hold. Ready?"

It took him an unconscionably long time, but eventually he said, "Yes, sir." 

"Transport." 

With a ship this small, transporter controls were on the bridge. Yahola was experienced with this at least and knew what he was doing. Or so I told myself. The whine of activation filled the small space. I could hear Lieutenant Genner inhaling heavily in the background. I waited. Four seconds. Five.

"Anything?"

"I'm not sure." 

I tapped my fingers against my leg. "Now?"

"I. . .don't know. Instruments show we've completed transportation, but I can't locate the materialization on scanners." Half a minute passed, until finally Yahola's shoulders slumped in defeat. "I'm sorry, sir. I don't think the air ever left the hold."

I whirled around and found my way up the steps to where Jordan was standing by the captain's post. "Captain, I want this ship to move."

Startled, she said, "Move? Where?"

I pointed towards the viewscreen. "There. Ahead impulse power point oh five."

"Into V'ger?" she asked incredulously. "Sir, you've got to recon -- "

"Now, Captain."

She swallowed visibly. "Aye-aye, Admiral. Lieutenant Genner, ahead impulse power point oh five."

"Aye, captain, impulse point oh five." I saw him input the commands, but there was no change in the view presented on the screen. "Uh, sir, the ship's not responding."

"Try bypassing the computer controls and going manual," I snapped. "You know how to do that?"

"Yes, sir, let me try. . . . It just seems like nothing's working." 

I wasn't going to stop trying. There were all sorts of ways to bypass to manual, and maybe one of them would be effective. Or it was possible that the transponder signals that had vanished would reappear; maybe they were just being occluded by a radiation belt between us and V'ger's core. If Spock were here, he'd work with me to find ten different approaches to try to overcome each problem. . . .

But he wasn't here. V'ger had said it: _Spock must become one with us._ Maybe that was why there was no signal. No signal: no friend. 

Genner was looking over his shoulder at me, a little frightened. Yahola was still fussing over his scanners, probably recalibrating. Captain Jordan was standing next to me when she should have been down at helm control with her young lieutenant, trying to find a way to get this ship to accelerate. 

And I. . . . I was trying not to take in the enormity of my friend's disappearance. There were other things to consider. How would we communicate with V'ger now? Was it -- were they -- going to stay in our universe? If Spock was. . .in V'ger, a part of it, would that magnificent mind make V'ger different, more reasonable? Or would Spock's intellect and personality be. . .obliterated? I wanted to clench my fists and pound them against the bulkheads. But I couldn't. There was work to be done. 

"Admiral. . . . Jim." It was Altena, being uncharacteristically gentle. "I'm so sorry. I really thought that -- "

"What?" I asked roughly. "That I perform miracles? You believe too much in my publicity. I told you what was likely to happen. I just. . .couldn't. . .stop it." 

"I'm not sure -- "

Abruptly, the console furthest from us exploded in a spray of sparks. Yahola exclaimed and jumped back, shouting, "Radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum! There's an enormous magnetic energy building up. . . . It's going to release in a flare any second, and -- "

The ship. . .twisted. Literally, as the physical laws of our universe were abruptly terminated. The long length of the bridge got even longer, and the viewscreen shifted to the left almost out of my sight. Rosenthal's arm, outstretched across the comm board, disconnected from her torso and floated next to her. And my own throat, caught in the middle of forming a command to Yahola, felt as if it were being compressed into just a millimeter or two. . . . 

The ship. . .screamed. I could hear the stress in her bulkheads as the engines roared in gigantic protest. An unearthly _whoosh_ came from the turbolift behind us, and air clamored around us, moving with the force of a hurricane wind. 

The ship. . .was being tugged into another universe, one of those bubble universes that existed side by side with ours but with completely different laws-of-being. I knew it in the seconds it took to process it all, and I didn't even have a chance to try to save any of us or even to force my disintegrating mouth to form "No!"

Then. . . . With a wrench my consciousness settled back into my familiar body, the ship returned to its ordinary contours, and the noise transfigured into silence. 

And down past the ruined console, right in front of the screen, stood Spock of Vulcan, bent over in his gray uniform with his hands on his knees and gasping, but recognizably my friend. 

Or. . . .

I raced down the steps towards him but skidded to a halt, preventing myself from grabbing his shoulders the way I wanted to. "Spock?" I wheezed. "V'ger?" Was this another Ilia-like machine, created in his image?

He looked up and his face was ashen. "I am temporarily unharmed, Admiral. But -- "

The lights unexpectedly dimmed and then flared bright again. _The Solar Queen_ shuddered, and I had to adjust my stance to keep to my feet. 

"V'ger!" Spock called out. "Stop! You must give me time! Ilia!" 

"Yahola, quickly, scan Commander Spock," I ordered. "Confirm that he's not. . .that he's a biological entity." 

I had to make sure, and of course Spock understood the necessity. But even as Yahola was saying "Uh. . . . Yes, sir. He's. . .alive. I can't confirm if the biological matrix is the same as before he left, so until I can get -- " he had grabbed my arm and pulled me as far away from the others as he could, into the far corner. 

"Jim, we have miscalculated," he said in a low voice that would not reach the others, with his face close to mine. "Or rather Ilia has miscalculated. V'ger is very angry."

"Why?" I asked urgently. The ship wouldn't survive another transition like the one that had almost sucked us into another universe. "What does it need?"

"Love." 

"What?" My head jerked up with incredulity. That was the last thing in the galaxy I expected to hear.

Spock nodded, and his words came tumbling out as quickly as he could form them. "To be precise, the physical expression of love through a sexual joining. When I melded with V'ger before, Admiral, you recall that I said I also gained an understanding of Ilia? I should have realized, she gained an understanding of me as well. She. . .recognized in me what I had recognized in her, the. . .emotion. She identified with it very strongly because it was so similar to what she harbored for Commander Decker." 

It was hard to take it all in. "And. . . ."

"And she assumed that as soon as you and I had the opportunity, we would. . .unite. But she and Decker, they are denied that. They are incorporeal within V'ger, and yet their consciousnesses do survive, along with their memories of their bodies and their feelings towards each other." 

"And they. . .remember that they want to have sex?" In the face of the threat that V'ger posed to the Federation and the entire galaxy, it was hard to believe. It all came down to. . .this?

"Jim, we have very little time. It is more complicated than simply their desires. From V'ger's perspective, Ilia and Decker are fundamentally incomplete because they never had the opportunity to express themselves in a sexual way. It is as you said to me: this emotion is not easily ignored or controlled. It moves towards fulfillment. They are together in every way but the physical. V'ger experiences their. . .lack, as in a sense they are V'ger now, and it is demanding that they erase the distance between them. That they join."

"But they can't." I saw our dilemma now. "They were going to use your memories? Live through you because your Vulcan mind allows memories to be so immediate?"

He nodded quickly. "Yes. But I have none, only the same. . .incompleteness." 

"Damnit, I can't believe it," I breathed. "This has got to be a joke. You and I are in the same situation that they are. . . . So why are you here? What did they send you back to do?"

"To. . . ." He looked at me with anguish. "They do not believe me, that I am incapable of this union in the way they require it, and I do not know why. The meld. . .it was more an absorption. . .it was more complete than I have ever experienced, and that should have told them. Jim, they want us to make love, and they will. . .be with us. If we refuse. . . ."

V'ger was listening somehow, probably through some connection it still retained through Spock, because right after he said “refuse,” Yahola announced, "Magnetic flare! Brace your -- "

I held onto Spock, he held onto me, we both grabbed for and then bent over the ruined console as the _Queen_ was assaulted again. The deck tilted perilously as the engines roared in protest, but much worse was that the ship's structure must have been incredibly stressed, because I heard a seam in one of the interior bulkheads around us popping as it bent under pressure. If we had a hull breach. . . .

"Genner," called Jordan from above us, "stabilizers! Reinforce the internal gravity controls!"

The lights flickered as at least double gravity suddenly pulled on my body, and then they went out altogether. Into the darkness I cried out, "V'ger! We'll do it! Give us a chance and we'll do it!"

We were both still leaning over the board when the attack abruptly ended and the lights came back on. We were facing one another, grasping each other's arms. "Admiral, that is impossible," Spock whispered to me. "They wish. . .full involvement. You know I cannot."

"But somebody else can," I said grimly. An instant later I was racing up the steps to where Captain Jordan had picked herself up and was working furiously at the helm. Rosenthal was trying to coordinate damage control in front of her; I didn't know where Genner was.

Jordan snarled, "What the hell are you doing to my ship? We can't take much more. We've got to stop this!"

"We will," I urgently agreed. "But I need your help." 

"How?"

It didn't matter who heard, who became privy to my private life or Spock's or hers or anybody's. Spock was right behind me, I could feel his presence. Okay. 

"V'ger wants to. . .experience sex," I condensed as much as I could. "It wanted Spock and me together, to know it through us, but. . .that's impossible. I don't have time to explain why, but if V'ger wants to mentally piggyback on two of us during lovemaking, we've got to give it something. You and me. For the ship, for the Federation. Okay?"

I could see she thought I was a madman. "In the middle of a crisis, you want to -- "

"This is the crisis, Altena! If we don't give V'ger what it wants, no matter how outrageous it might seem to us, we're not going to survive much longer."

"Agreed," Spock put in. "Your hull was seriously stressed the last time."

"I know, but why not -- "

"No buts. I need somebody else, not Spock, to do this with me. It's either you or Lieutenant Rosenthal." I didn't even consider one of the men. "Will you do it?"

"Okay, but when -- "

"Right now." I grabbed her hand and called out, "V'ger! We're giving you what you want. Just another few min -- "

I had seriously miscalculated. 

The ship lurched, and I was whipped forward and banged into the captain's station. All my air whooshed out as my stomach jammed into a hard corner. And then I tumbled down the aisle, hard, over two steps. Jordan went flying against the bulkhead on the other side as the _Queen_ continued a mad dance.

"Jim!" Spock called. 

V'ger had just been toying with us before. 

The _Queen_ was moaning. It was a strong ship, capable of withstanding enormous pressures close to a star, but no manufactured structure could stand up against the living machine we faced. I could think of only one thing we could try that might help, what I had been avoiding so far. I pushed myself up with difficulty, but the fastest way back to shield control was on my knees, and so I crawled to eventually lever myself up the chair where Jordan should have been but wasn't. 

Spock was there seconds before me. I watched him struggle to input the shield commands, but then he looked up, shook his head, and mouthed _inoperative._

I thought furiously. There was nothing we could do, nothing anybody could do. Except what we'd done before. . . .

"V'ger!" I called. "Tell us what you -- "

We felt the machine's anger and I fell down the steps again, until I managed to stop by twisting into a ball and rolling over towards the center. I impacted against what must have been the base of the comm chair. 

"Will! We can't help you if we're dead!"

I held on tight as the ship torqued, turned, and then somersaulted, as if the helmsman were putting her through acrobatic maneuvers to escape the Klingons in full battle-mode, and I forced myself to think through it all. We had to find a way out of this. If V'ger didn't want Altena, then maybe Rosenthal. . . .

No, it -- they -- wanted Spock and me. What had Spock said? Absorption? V'ger was practically omnipotent. Even before it had taken up Will Decker it had known almost everything, although it hadn't been able to effectively evaluate what it knew. Now, with both Will and Ilia acting within its consciousness, I had to believe it was even closer to the kind of being many of my fellow humans worshiped. And V'ger didn't accept Spock's assertion that he was incapable of sexual response.

I managed to raise my head against the fearful acceleration that was stressing gravity control. Spock was struggling against the port bulkhead, not five meters away, making slow headway back to the main control board. I released my grip and was sent spinning towards him. . . . 

He reached out to catch me, I fell into him, and we toppled down to the deck in a hard embrace. We were stretched out on our sides with the edge of a step cutting cruelly into my ribs. Over our heads I could hear Jordan screaming, "For God's sake, give V'ger what it wants! Kiss him! You're going to kill us all if you don't kiss him!"

I grabbed his shoulder, sought his lips, connected. . . . For the space of two rapid Vulcan heartbeats he stiffened, but then with determination he bent his head to mine. 

What I'd wanted for years I barely noticed -- his mouth against my own -- because I was so tuned to the danger to the ship. Within a moment, though, the fearsome noise abated, the ship stabilized, and the deck's cant straightened. Wildly, my lips still pressed against Spock's, I rolled my eyes to look around, as if to see Ilia and Will materializing before us. That was foolishness. V'ger was. . .right in front of me, clutching my waist with determination. 

"Admiral, we must try," he murmured with our mouths still in non-erotic contact.

"We don't have a choice." 

"Agreed."

He moved as if to retreat from me but I wouldn't let him. "Spock? We can do this. V'ger wants. . .love." 

And then I kissed him, even though our lips had remained minimally together as we'd been talking. Really kissed him, inhaling the scent of him and letting my caged love boil up for a long, exhilarating moment. Whatever else came from this, he needed to know. . . .

He did. Because he kissed me back. With none of the passion that he didn't have, that we'd somehow have to ignite, but he did kiss me back, and my heart thumped heavily, twice. 

We clambered to our feet and I tugged on my uniform tunic, the white one that I favored. I was bruised everywhere from the pummeling V'ger had given us, and I had no assurance that this was going to work. 

I glanced at him. "Does V'ger know?"

He nodded. "I can feel. . .approbation. Anticipation. Jim, we must not waste time." 

The rest of the crew were stunned, embarrassed, observing us while trying to appear as if they weren't. Genner was awkwardly holding his arm as if it were broken. I focused on Jordan. 

"Captain, I leave the ship in your capable hands. Commander Spock and I will be. . .in my cabin. If this doesn't work. . . . Do your best." We turned towards the lift and then I stopped and added, "Oh, and, Captain? Altena? Thank you for. . .volunteering, before."

"You're welcome," she said, as if she had no idea what else to say. Then, with a wry tilt of her head, "Good luck, gentlemen." 

 

***** *****

 

On Earth, the northern hemisphere was bracing itself for the cold of winter. Snow would fall, ice would form, and the tree tops would bend in the wind. For weeks the nights had been getting obviously longer, and the last few days had seen the sun dip perilously lower in the sky. Though people were preparing to celebrate the annual holidays that were the traditional occasions of good cheer and merriment, not many of them would stop to think that the timing of those holidays was rooted in the retreat of the sun down towards the horizon and the primal fear that its light would disappear forever. 

In the Canadian Rockies the guests at Timberland in their expensive parkas were probably even now getting ready to leave the warm lodge and traipse out to the piled-up wood. They would wait until the dead of night, for the exact time of the winter solstice was 1:24 a.m. this year. They'd go, smiling, laughing, some of them with drinks in their hands, along the same path that Spock and I had followed just days before. They would gather around the small mountain of twigs and branches and hacked off logs, in unconscious imitation of our long-ago ancestors who had gathered around altars with bloody sacrifices. _Please,_ the early humans had prayed to some power greater than themselves, they knew not to whom, _don't let the light go out._

It would be very dark, probably with a cloudy overcast and no stars visible. Maybe somebody would stumble over the same out-thrust root that had caught my foot, when I would have fallen if Spock hadn't caught me. Once everyone who cared to witness the ceremony had arrived, some care-worn employee who had seen it all before would set a match to the tinder. It would be very quiet.

A flame would burn, slowly at first, and then a log would catch, and another and another. There would be a few _oohs_ and _aahs,_ and faces that had been in shadow would be illuminated. The yellow glow would catch all their expressions, but not one of those people would be praying in the old way. They were just out there for the fun; they had no fear in them. 

I did. 

I'd seen more than most, but maybe that had served to maintain a sense of wonder in me that others might lack. Even so, I still didn't know if there was a god, and I probably never would know for sure. The turbolift door closed on me and on Spock, and I turned to look at him. When I had thought he was lost, twice now he'd come back to me. I didn't want to test fate a third time.

_By all that's holy in this universe, let us do this. By some miracle, let me love him and let him love me. V'ger, are you listening?_

_God of this universe, of all the bubble universes and all the beings and the proto-beings on all the planets and of my skeptical soul and of his steadfast search and by the love we bear each other, let this happen._

I would make this happen. We would. 

The lights in the lift flickered, and the speed of its descent noticeably slowed. We both looked towards the intercom; I frowned, but neither of us activated it. We knew what was happening. I felt. . .it was like an itch where I couldn't scratch it or an invisible hand on my back, pushing me forward. V'ger was with us.

The lift doors opened; it was a short trip from the bridge to deck two where my borrowed cabin was. The hallway was dimmed as if for night-shift, when it should have been bright with the red alert. 

By the time the doors closed on us and we marched like good soldiers up to the bed, the lights had faded even more and it was twilight in the cabin. His lined face, that would probably always bear Gol's mark, was visible to me as if in a dream. I reminded myself that I loved him, that I wanted to make love with him almost as much as I'd wanted my first command, that he completed me. . .but all I could feel was that pressure against my back.

_Go on, Jim._

I jerked just as I saw something flash in Spock's eyes. He'd heard that, too. The voice talking to me was Will Decker's, but there was a distinct impression of Ilia as well, something like an echo as I perceived that she had spoken to Spock. 

_Hurry._

And just for a moment, the hint of some lurking immensity over which neither Will nor Ilia had much control. 

I reached for Spock, he reached for me, and then we jammed our lips together in a bruising kiss that reflected only desperation. His hands were on my shoulders, mine were on his, and for a ludicrous few seconds we grappled for control as I wanted us to remain standing and he wanted us horizontal. Then I relented and he tumbled us down to the bunk. 

His grip on me was hard and even painful, as if he were too intent on our task to monitor the force he was using, but I wouldn't let that stop me. I rolled over on top of him and plunged my tongue through his moist lips. He sucked on it as if he wanted to, and I pumped my hips into his as if I had an erection and was stimulating myself. We were both fooling ourselves, but what choice did we have? 

I ripped my mouth away from his and gasped, "Let's get our clothes off." I had fantasized this when I hadn't been strong enough to stop myself: had imagined a slow seduction when I'd peeled Spock's uniform off and revealed the whipcord body it hid, when I had stood and allowed him to undress me, when we'd spent hours learning the pathways of pleasure for our bodies, but this was as far from that scenario as could be. I was far from being able to encourage passion in him: it was impossible for me to ignore the presence of V'ger in our bed. I wasn't even close to achieving an erection myself. There wasn't a tingle of eroticism in our coming together. Maybe seeing him naked. . . . God, I'd wanted to see him naked and wanting me.

_Hurry._

We each jumped up and started unbuttoning and unzipping. I pulled my tunic over my head, he shrugged his uniform down around his waist and then stepped out of it as I was pushing my trousers and briefs off. It took all of fifteen seconds. I needed a lot longer than that for any results, and from the concern in his eyes as he stood unclothed in front of me, so did Spock. 

Inevitably, my gaze went lower. His uniquely configured penis -- not quite human, not quite Vulcan -- was limp. Just like mine. Not how I had thought we'd ever come together. Just thinking about him, before, had made me hard. 

With determination, he took my hand and pulled me down to the bed again, but I made sure we ended up on our sides. I wanted to kiss him some more, to suck down the length of his neck, to lick along the curve of his ears and see how sensitive he was there, to card my fingers through the hair on his chest and find his nipples, to run my hand along the curve of his neat ass, but there wasn't any time for the slow, complete love-making of my imagining. I went straight for the point of greatest sensation in all male humanoids: I took his cock in my hand, determined to make it take notice. 

_Hurry. Both of you. . . ._

Spock moaned, not in desire but in despair. With the intrusion of strangers into our bed, this seemed impossible. 

"Touch me," I whispered. I couldn't imagine Spock being passive in bed under normal conditions, and I was certain he would be a generous lover interested in his partner's pleasure. Maybe my own arousal would stimulate his.

I looked down between us to watch his fingers curve around my cock; the jolt of erotic electricity that shot through me when he formed a fist around it forced me to struggle for air.

"Oh, God! Yes, Spock!" 

I got hard so fast it was painful; in thirty seconds I was fully erect. He murmured "Jim," and shifted closer, clearly more interested in the reaction he was getting from me than in his own elusive response. He went up on one elbow and demanded my mouth, all while stroking me, and I went down under his possession like a man tossed into a roiling ocean. For precious seconds I succumbed to it, to him, and I only thought of us, of him naked next to me, of his lips and his hand and his mind and the timbre of his voice and the way he looked at me and how damned much I wanted to fuck him and hear him come. . . .

_Yes. . . . Ilia. . . ._

I'd been on the verge of just rolling onto my back and letting him keep doing it to me, but this whisper-thought from Decker, full of longing, pulled me back to reality, and my closing eyes jolted open. I recognized that feeling; it matched my own. The two former captains of the _Enterprise_ had more in common than either of us had ever imagined. For both of us, for all four of us, I had to find a way to break through to Spock's passion. I knew it was there; I'd always known he could feel and love deeply, completely, and I believed him when he told me he loved me. I had to also believe that his body would follow where his precious emotions led. 

"Your turn," I insisted, because it was obvious that, though he was vitally interested in stimulating me, nothing was happening to his own body. He kept a tenacious hand on me, but I firmed my grip on his flaccid organ.

"Jim, I do not think -- "

"Don't think. Just feel. Tell me what feels good. Anything."

The tip of his shaft was just spongy softness, with no moisture rubbing against my thumb. But I'd never made love with him or any other Vulcanoid male, and I didn't know what was normal. There was some sort of extra structure around the urethral opening, a small mound surrounding it, along with raised striations that wound down around the head. They might be dense with nerve endings that could drive him wild when he was erect. I thought of him penetrating a partner -- me -- and loving what the friction would do to him. . . . But no. 

"That is not effective," he said with no inflection. 

"Something else?"

"I. . .I am trying. Intellectually I know my body should be experiencing sensual excitement, but. . . ." 

"Maybe you're trying too hard." He still had me, somewhat awkwardly, within his hand. "Why don't you let go of me? Concentrate. Concentrate on what this feels like."

Unaroused, his length was impressive, though I'd read that Vulcan males didn't expand much during sex. Who knew what was the norm for Spock? Feeling the weight of his organ in my hand, I wondered what it would feel like to be stretched by him, to have him enter me, to have his power and integrity and all his focused attention on and within my body. Saliva filled my mouth even more at the image of him mounted over me, driving into me and his face contorted because of how much he loved making love with me. . . .

A sudden craving to go down on him swept over me, and I didn't resist it. With a growl I pushed him over onto his back, slid down the mattress, and sucked him in. 

He cried out softly, though in surprise; his big hands came to rest on my head, and I loved it. I loved kneeling there over him and I loved the way his powerful hands were so gently touching me and I loved the heat against my tongue. I imagined it firm. Demanding. We could have this. We could have this all the time if somehow we could give Will and Ilia what they needed. 

I circled the base with one hand and held his limpness in the palm of my other. I kissed my way up his column, then licked the crooked vein that flowed the length of him. When we'd kissed, he'd tasted differently from any other lover I'd ever had, some clashing combination of juniper and strawberries that reflected who he was, his contrasts and contradictions, and it was more of the same here, a sharp tang overlaying sweetness. . . . My Vulcan. My despairing, unmoved Vulcan who, like me, felt the weight of billions of lives on his shoulders and just wasn't responding to my efforts. 

Something had to move him! I took him in again and went all the way down, conquering my gag reflex and coming to rest in his pubic thatch. If he'd done this to me I wouldn't have lasted a minute, and my cock jerked between my legs as I thought of shooting off in his mouth. 

_JimSpock, we can't wait!_

V'ger's pressure in the small of my back popped like a balloon, and it spread up over my shoulders and down my buttocks in almost-painful intensity. My fear trebled in an instant. We were getting nowhere. This wasn't lovemaking, it was an exhibition of my ineptitude and a demonstration of Spock's stubborn misunderstanding. 

_Give yourselves to us!_

I felt Ilia's and Decker's fear as my own. When before they'd been barely perceptible, now their personalities seemed to flavor my thoughts; I could almost taste them on my tongue. They feared dissolution within V'ger's demands, and they desperately needed to find their own completion within ours. 

With a frustrated grunt Spock pulled me up next to him. "This isn't working," he hissed in my face. "Why won't they believe me?" His head turned sharply to confront the overhead bulkhead. "V'ger, I can't do this!"

I grabbed his arms and shook him. "Yes, you can. You can!"

"No!" he insisted sharply. "We must find an alternative partner for you."

"That won't work. Will and Ilia love each other. I don't love anybody on this ship, anywhere, except you!" 

Abruptly he was up and standing next to the bed, looking down on me like a furious angel. "Admit it. Our love is a travesty, incapable of normal expression."

"Expression?" I stormed. "You want expression of love?" I was on my feet confronting him. "How about in my apartment? You kept touching me like you couldn't get enough. Remember? You, a touch-me-not Vulcan fresh from the sands of Gol." I circled my own wrist. "You grabbed me here, and my shoulders, our hands. . . . And what about touching my face? If all your talk about not being able to act sexually any more was true, then what was driving you to do that? Damnit, Spock, I could see it, you wanted to kiss me!" 

"I. . . ." He was visibly taken aback. "I. . .was simply reacting to your -- "

"Like hell," I snarled. "You Vulcans are so intent on repression you wouldn't know an erotic impulse if you fell over it. And what about at the lodge at Timberlands?"

"I did not touch you in the lodge."

"No? Not my body, but everywhere else. Everywhere else with your eyes, your words, and how you said them. You said you wouldn't ever let me be lonely. We flirted with each other all night long, the way we did for five years on the ship, and if there wasn't a physical impulse driving you, that I was responding to, I don't know anything about sexuality. And I do. Especially I know about your sexuality."

"Then how do you explain my inability to respond now?" he challenged. "Or last night?"

I snorted. "Talk about performance anxiety! Casanova himself would have a tough time getting it up right now, or before, knowing what was to come. But V'ger knows you, Spock, down to the electrical impulses in your brain, and V'ger is convinced that you can give Will and Ilia what they need. . .and," I spoke my real truth, "what the two of us need, too."

His brow furrowed in thought. "You imply. . .subliminal clues that you have understood when I did not. I. . .never evaluated my actions towards you. But I did dream of you during the time I was on Vulcan on assignment. The images were. . .erotic in nature."

I shook my head. "Dreams don't happen without reasons. You're filled with physical, sexual impulses towards me, Spock. Just. . .we've got to find a way for you to express them or V'ger. . . . I don't want to know what V'ger will do." 

Finally, his expression softened. "Jim. Come here."

He gathered me up in his arms and kissed me, and as we lingered I felt his fingers on the side of my face, by my temple. In a flash I understood his propensity for caressing me there. 

"I fear to do this now," he said quietly, "although I have yearned for a meld with you for months. I am still somehow within V'ger's consciousness, so we may be pulled in as Decker and Lieutenant Ilia were. There is danger to you."

I gave him a sad smile. "As compared to the danger you walked right into when you gave yourself willingly to V'ger? Or compared to the danger the planets all around us are in if we fail here? I don't think what happens to me really matters."

"It matters to me," he said intensely. "You always matter." In the dimness his Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed heavily; his fingers pressed against the meld points of my cheek and jaw. "My abilities have not fully recovered, but I will do my best. I love you, James Kirk."

"No! Don't say that like you're saying good-bye. We'll have our tomorrows." 

The cabin's twilight was replaced by the darkest hour of night, with no stars to break the inky black. A cold wind gusted against my back, almost pushing me over, and threatening: V'ger. I could feel it in my mind, a gunmetal oiled steel. Its impatience was palpable, as if it were barely holding itself back from roaring fury. 

I forced myself to wait. The night was long while Spock searched for me. How damaged had he been by his contact with V'ger so many weeks ago? Had he been further injured by this last absorption? 

_//Will! Ilia! Hold on. We'll find a way.//_

But there wasn't any response. How much of their individuality really still existed? Maybe what we'd detected had been more an echo, or a shadow of what had been, or just shells of their personalities controlled by V'ger. 

Out of the darkness a spark flared, like the wick of a candle fighting to illuminate an entire town. . .or a small circle of night under the pine trees.

_//Spock!//_

//I come to you.// 

The flame caught and held, grew brighter. The tinder of the bonfire spread to a twig and then to a resined branch. I could hear the wood crackling as it sacrificed itself to the fire. V'ger pushed me towards the light, and I went willingly, step by step, until the heat seared my face. 

_//Spock?//_

He was there, a living flame within the solstice offering, an image of brilliance, his hair on fire, his face alight in the same way as when Ilia and Will had merged. Burning. . . .

_//Come to me.//_

I took his hand without flinching and stepped within him.

Scorched! In an instant we were both burned down to the essentials. Fire has no physical boundaries, and it was easy to merge. Our flames blazed together and I beheld him in a way that I'd never perceived before. This was different, whether because this joining was fueled by V'ger or Spock was holding himself wide open without barriers or. . . .

. . .or because of the strength of the emotions that bound us together. 

Already we had scarred each other with our anger and the way he'd rejected me and how I'd driven him away with my forceful humanity. If we entwined our lives further, more misunderstandings were certain, more times when he'd be silent or I'd be demanding or we'd be too Vulcan or too human for each other.

_//It doesn't matter. I couldn't give myself to Lori because you already had me. I need to be with you so I can find myself.//_

_//No less than I need you. See.//_

Illuminated! I reeled before the roaring force of his star-bright hunger. _The Solar Queen_ hadn't found a sun's core as powerful as what he revealed to me. This was Vulcan passion, expressed in a fierce requirement for the bondmate that most humanoids couldn't tolerate, not the all-encompassing devotion or the single-minded fixation. 

But I could. I could! I wanted everything he was and could give me. My knowledge was steel-sharp, forged in our affinity, honed in our cruel separation, and now brought to the finest edge by this inferno we shared in the meld. 

_//Show me your desire.//_

I'd lived with it for a long time, keeping it hidden like the precious jewel it was, and then after our confrontation, I'd tried to destroy it. But nothing could be hidden in his light. 

_//I want to undress in front of you, slowly, and watch you take deep, ragged breaths because you need to touch me so much. I want you to leave suck-marks on my skin that I'll have to take on duty with me, that I'll feel all day and want to get more of that night. I want you to roll my balls in your mouth until I'm breathless from how good it feels. I want to suck your cock until it's hard and open my throat muscles as you shove it against my tongue, and then I want to hear my name on your lips when you come, gloriously, arching up into the air and throwing out your arms because I made you feel like you've never felt before. I want to roll you over onto your back//_

_//like this//_

_//and push your legs up and back//_

_//like this//_

_//and plunge my fingers into your ass to stretch you, and then since we don't have any lubricant I'll use spit to make my cock slick//_

_//like this//_

_//and I'll try to ease into you carefully because, damnit, I love you, Spock.//_

_//I cherish you, Jim.//_

_//Ilia! I love you!//_

_//Will!//_

Abruptly I fell out of my communion with Spock and into one of my fantasies, because I was on my knees on a Starfleet bunk, the heavy weight of Vulcan legs was against my shoulders, and I was about to push myself with a first stroke into the body of the man I needed past telling.

I couldn't even call his name as I hovered just before penetration, because my cock was overcome with sensation and my brain was filled up with the promise that my lust finally, finally, finally would be satisfied and. . .with Will Decker, too. 

There was no question he was real and himself; Will was inside me, inhabiting my body along with me. His lust was feeding mine, mine supporting his, and we were both aiming towards orgasm as our over-riding goal. 

As Spock clutched my arms, I was able to focus on his face. There were the beloved features of the one I wanted to make a life with, but overlaid on them were Ilia's. Spock's face and Ilia's shifted back and forth in a weird dance of slanted or rounded eyebrows, of dark head or gleaming baldness, of craggy masculinity or delicate femininity.

I should have been horrified or lost my erection, but instead I experienced an overriding kinship with them, especially with Will and his hopeless passion that only we would enable him to fulfill this one time. I wanted to say something to him, but he was me and I was him and, besides, it was then my befuddled mind realized. . .it had happened. 

Spock's penis was fully erect, reaching towards his belly, and weeping copious pre-ejaculate. Unabashed joy was shining in his eyes. 

"Jim! See how I hunger for you."

I couldn't help myself, I abandoned my goal as an even greater longing overwhelmed me. I pulled back from what we'd been about to do and fell on his stiffness to kiss and suck him with ardor and gratitude. 

_Thank God. Whatever God there is, thank you. . . ._

"Do you like this?" I eagerly asked him around the hardness I had feared I would never experience. "Does this feel good? Tell me!"

"Can you doubt it?" he murmured. "Please continue. To see you do this. . . . To know we can share ourselves. . . . Yes, Jim, yes!" 

His fingers brushed through my hair, his and also another's, slender and tender. I couldn't resent Ilia or Will's elation that finally they were able to do this. . . . I detected Spock's unique flavor and also a woman's pungent scent and taste as I licked both shaft and pussy at the same time, and though I was dizzied by it all, I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Will's mind-voice was laughing in sheer delight, loving how Ilia was. . .wriggling. That was something I was sure Spock would never do, but the body attached to the cock I was laving with my tongue was not only heaving up with hoarse cries, demanding more, but also wriggling from side to side in a purely feminine motion.

I gave up trying to distinguish who was who; I knew who I was and where my heart was, and Spock knew that, too. 

Spock knew who he was as well. Gifted at last with the blessing of a responsive sexuality, he reveled in my ministrations for long minutes, as his hands tightened alternately on my head or in the bedclothes. He murmured commands, and endearments in Vulcan and in Standard, and wordless sounds that made my heart thump in my chest. He was responding to me. The monk come back from Gol, the Kolinahru-who-almost-was, the man who had divorced his body loved what I was doing for him. 

But soon with a grunt and a powerful shove he pushed me away and then over onto my back; then he fell on my column with all the force of his newly released passions. . .and in the background sounded the gratification of a woman finally given the opportunity to do this for her mate.

I lay back and endured Spock's determined, loving assault as best I could, struggling against impending orgasm. Just knowing it was my former first officer, my absent friend, and my future bent between my sprawled legs was enough to propel me perilously close to the edge, but realizing also that it was Ilia bent over Will, and feeling his ecstasy as if it ran through a parallel nervous system in my own body. . . . It was a miracle I managed to hold out against climaxing.

And the same for Will. He was clutching every single second desperately, trying to make it last, and knowing that this one experience must serve him for an eternity. But there was no stopping the cascade of craving that had taken over all four of us. We needed to find our fulfillment in each other, and we needed it now. 

There was no hesitation. One moment I was sprawled on the mattress with my legs spread as Spock fingered my balls and sucked me, and the next we were mutually maneuvering back into the position we'd been in when we had emerged from the meld. He grabbed a pillow and shoved it under himself, presenting the perfect angle. 

I paused with my cock, wet from his saliva, snugged firmly against his sphincter. I could see Ilia's expectant, welcoming face, too, but I wanted to speak only to him. I had no idea if he had ever done this with a lover before, and I wanted to somehow convey what this meant to me, the possessing of his body in this most intimate and difficult of ways. I was being given my heart's desire, and that just didn't happen very often. Or maybe. . . .

Or maybe this was one of the cycles of nature that I should have trusted. The ancient humans hadn't needed to make sacrifices and light fires to ensure that the longest night would retreat into light-filled, lengthening days. The Earth would have continued in its revolution around the sun with or without their prayers. And in just that way, I should have known that Spock and me, together, was going to happen no matter what. No matter the darkness of our separation or the pain of his rejection or the impossibility that he would find his body again: dawn would always break for us. 

Or maybe. . .maybe, like the early humans, all along I'd been praying to some power greater than myself, I knew not to whom, and this was my answer. Spock, pulling on my arms in welcome to bring me down towards him, was my answer. 

I let myself sink into him. 

Into the inferno of him. Into the brilliance of him, his white-hot intensity and his always shimmering integrity and the incredible heat of his body.

This was the secret of my attraction to him. Fire was elemental, mysterious, a substance that had no form, a consuming force that yet gave out energy, an ever-changing, exciting power that I could return to again and again to always find it new.

My cock was surrounded by flame, almost hot enough to burn, almost hot enough to force me to retreat. . .but not. Hot enough to lure me, to tempt me, to make me need him, to keep me fascinated. 

I fought my way through constricting heat until my balls grazed the curve of his ass and then forced myself to stop without stroking back up. Will protested with a snarl that only a man intent on thrusting could have produced.

"Okay?" Sweat dripped from my face onto Spock's chest; one drop landed on the tip of his chin. "Can I go on?" My braced arms trembled with the urge to move, but I held myself still. 

He. . .smiled. I leaned in closer just to see the curve of his mouth. And then he took my face between his hands and said, "Yes."

Just that. Yes. 

It echoed in my head as Will and Ilia said the same, to us and to each other, and my heart swelled with so much love fulfilled that I knew I'd never be able to remember that moment exactly the way it was: four souls finding their union.

I pulled back slowly as Will begged me to take my time, to make it last -- but for God's sake to keep moving -- until only the head of my shaft was lodged in my lover's body. I looked down at our union and saw Spock's penis bobbing, untended, between us. 

"Touch yourself," I whispered. 

I eased myself forward again, slow and easy, anticipating that the lack of effective lubricant would impede us, but he was a Vulcan with control of his body, and there was another person in that bed with us whose body had been made for penetration. Somehow the moist clinging of Ilia around me eased our way, too. 

I concentrated on the incredible feeling of heated anal walls gripping me all around. On the next stroke I pulled out all the way, but quickly reinserted myself, just to feel myself going through his greedy sphincter again. So good. . . . I cried out loud and heard Will doing the same. Again. And again. And again, until my hips were thrusting smoothly and orgasm was licking its way up my spine and across my shoulders and I didn't want to stop.

"Faster," Spock demanded. He was gripping my arm with one hand, his fingers keeping a firm hold on me, but by the other hand's motion I could tell he had followed my command: in the constricted space between us, he was jerking himself off.

The thought of him pleasuring himself while I fucked him -- the very word "fuck" used in connection with my so-proper former first officer -- sent a shot of pure sexualized adrenalin straight into my straining cock. I wasn't going to last much longer.

And if I was going to shoot any second, I wasn't going to let him finish himself off alone. "Let me do it. Let me help," I gasped, and I shifted so that my hand was over his and adopting the same motion that pleasured him the best. 

The position was awkward with me keeping myself up on one arm, but Spock supported my shoulder and held me up on the other side with his free hand, and I was so close to climaxing that I wouldn't need much to send me off. That wasn't important; what was important were our joined hands moving on his erection, and the look on his face as I kept driving into him, and the exultation in Will's mind of completion about to be achieved.

Spock's eyes closed. His lips thinned. His shoulders strained back. Almost there. Almost. Our hands pistoned together, my hips pushed into him frantically, into Ilia's enfolding softness, too, and she was calling Will's name. . . .

"Jim!"

_Ilia!_

Moisture spilled out over my hand as Spock shuddered once, twice in ecstatic release; his head twisted to the side and the muscles of his neck stood out tensely. And then. . . . His eyes shot open and he grabbed my shoulders, thrust up so that I was completely buried in him, and gripped with his anal muscles, hard. 

I came like a meteor falling to earth, all bright light exploding as I helplessly poured myself into him. 

I was the last of the four of us to find my place, and as I slipped off Spock onto my side, panting, and he pulled me into an embrace, both Will and Ilia were strong within my thoughts. 

_There won't be any destruction. You gave us life instead. V'ger's satisfied._

Still breathless from his exertions and with his wet hand spread against my back, Spock asked aloud "You will continue to exist in your new forms?"

_Yes. Fulfilled. I've got to hand it to you, Jim. . . ._

That was Decker. 

_Thank you, Admiral Kirk. Commander Spock. Will and I both thank you._

And that was his once and always lover. 

"I must thank you as well, Ilia." Spock's arms around me tightened. "You have given me a great gift. Although how you were sure of what I was capable of when I did not know it myself escapes me."

_You and I, we are the same. Celibacy for us. . .is not a good thing. Live long and prosper, Commander._

And as quickly as that, they were gone. 

We lay together in silence for a while after that. My nose was practically buried in Spock's chest hair as we hugged each other; he smelled good, and I liked the way he snugged his chin on top of my head. I didn't have anything to say to him that we hadn't already said in the meld or with our lovemaking -- except maybe to ask when he was going to move in with me and when he would help me refine my plan so we could keep the _Enterprise_ for good. Somehow, I didn't doubt that we'd get our ship back now. It was like a force of nature that I should trust, and I did. Another five year mission on my ship, in command on my bridge, with my best friend and lover by my side. . . I'd found myself again. I drifted into contented slumber on the thought.

The buzz of the intercom awakened me. I was disoriented for a moment, thinking we were in my cabin on the old _Enterprise_ because I'd been dreaming of us there. Nothing earth-shattering or Federation-saving, just Spock sitting on the side of the bed taking off his boots and me talking to him about a new ship we'd been assigned to, made of red-hot, flowing molten flame.

I sat up and thumbed the connection open. Spock had already pushed himself upright. "Kirk here."

"Admiral? Are you. . .there?" 

Spock and I exchanged amused glances. "Obviously, Captain Jordan," I answered briskly. "Ship's status?"

"That's why I called you, sir. Sorry to interrupt."

"That's all right, Altena. What's going on with V'ger?"

She settled into reporting-to-a-superior officer mode. "Seven minutes ago the electromagnetic flux changed markedly. Yahola called it a Spring-Xereaugh degradation. We monitored, but nothing else seemed to be happening. And then three minutes after that V'ger just disappeared. It took less than five seconds. Remarkable. There's residual radiation, that's it. Yahola is trying to track it through one of Commander Spock's bubble universes and thinks he might have a fix, but he's not certain." 

"No other attacks on the ship? No further damage?"

"You didn't notice?" Captain Jordan sounded amused. "No, sir. I guess. . .mission accomplished?"

I regarded my bedmate with satisfaction. "Mission accomplished, Captain. We'll be returning to the bridge in. . .give us a few minutes."

"Aye, sir."

"Kirk out."

Spock was looking thoughtful. "We appear to have neglected the matter of our responsibility for driving V'ger to another universe. If it is inhabited. . . ."

"It's not," I said immediately, and then questioned why I was so certain. "Didn't you pick that up from Decker?"

"I was primarily in contact with Ilia." 

"Don't worry. It's a whole new universe for them."

His eyes warmed, and he rested a possessive hand on my thigh. "As it is for us. Would you be interested in joint accommodation?" 

I had to grin at that. "Your place or mine?" 

"I do not have a place, so it must be yours. But only until -- "

" -- the ship launches again. I think there's a spot open for first officer. Interested?"

I pulled him into a kiss -- wrapped my arms around him and went about the job thoroughly -- that didn't end until we were both out of breath and back down on the bed. It took quite a while. 

He emerged from my embrace looking endearingly ruffled, with his hair in disarray and an expression on his face that I interpreted as being fairly shocked at his own enthusiastic response. I let my hand drift down his side to his groin and wrapped my fingers around the renewed hardness I found there. 

"Jim" he said, and he pressed a kiss into the most tender area of my neck, below my ear. "I would be most interested in exploring the possibilities of further intimacy between us, but not at this time." 

"I know. Duty."

"Indeed. And I wish to establish V'ger's position even if it is no longer a threat to us."

Some parts of Spock would never really change, and I found that I liked that. He was still the same being I had fallen in love with on our ship. 

"Okay, you've got the scanner, Mister Spock."

"Aye-aye, Captain," he said with a smile glimmering in his eyes. 

I traced a line down the length of his nose. "You know, that was the weirdest lovemaking I ever -- the best lovemaking, mind you, since it was with you, but still -- the weirdest lovemaking I've ever indulged in. What did you see? What did you feel?"

"I saw Will Decker's features as well as your own, but I only looked at you."

How to respond to such words? He said them lightly, but I knew he meant them. "We're going to have to go into detail, you know. For our debriefing."

"I do not anticipate doing so with any pleasure. However, I believe the experience must have been even more exotic for you, as you were interacting with two genders at once. You. . .have primarily been a lover of women."

"And now I'm your lover. Period." 

"I accept your declaration. You have my own. Jim?"

I loved the sound of his velvet voice talking to me in the warm intimacy of the bed we shared. "Yes?"

"I was truly convinced that I could not respond to you in a sexual manner."

"I know."

He touched my hair in a tender gesture, so seriously. "You persisted in attempting to rouse me. If you had not. . . ."

"All you. . .all we needed was the meld. That's what made it real to you."

"I believe the mental union that Decker and Ilia already shared within V'ger needed to be mimicked by the two of us, before the four of us could find physical completion as well. And you know that I was blocked from use of my mental powers for months. Consequently I had no understanding of my complete self or that my passion for you could be translated to the physical." 

"Thank God you realized that at last."

"I regretted the loss of my sexual responsiveness bitterly, once I came to realize how I truly felt about you." Again he stroked my hair, only this time keeping his hand there and anchoring us together. Intensely, he said to me, "You have given me back a part of myself I had lost."

"And you've done exactly the same thing for me," I told him simply. "I need you." 

"You have me, Jim. In all the ways we were meant to be together."

I looked into his eyes and saw our truth there. "Spock," I whispered, and then we merged into a kiss that reflected the heat between us, heat and light that would endure for the rest of our lives. 

After our long night of separation and distance, we'd rekindled our fire. 

 

The End

Note from Jenna: Thanks for reading "Rekindling Fire." I wrote it in response to a cliche that kept circulating in my mind: The f*ck that saved the universe. Well, yeah. I hope you like the novella and are as amused by its inspiration as I am. I always smile when I think of this story because of that!

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Slash Advent calendar at: http://www.kardasi.com/Advent/2005/ Posted on December 21, 2005. Then kindly printed by Kathleen Resch in T'hy'la 30


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